Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Word

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Madeline
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Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Word

Post by Madeline »

hi,

I've just starting investigating Flare and have got the trial version installed for a play. Our existing manuals do not use a template and have no styles applied (all manual formatting). So I'm guessing it's probably going to be just as quick to copy and paste the content in? Our manuals are all 'one-offs' and currently we create them by finding the most similar existing manual and saving a copy of that which we update to create the new manual. So once we have a few manuals in Flare there won't be that much new content to copy and paste over. We also have a *lot* of 'just about the same but not quite' content that's come about because with our current system, it's usually quicker to rewrite chunks from scratch than try and find them to copy and paste in the vast amount of existing word documents. So it will be manual task to compare those topics as the come across anyway.

Thoughts from those who have done this before?

Thanks
Madeline
Psider
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by Psider »

For the initial setup to get the bulk of the content in, I like to fix all the formatting in Word. I find it quicker and easier to skim through the whole document using Words shortcut keys and format painter to apply styles consistently and remove inline formatting, rather than manually opening individual topics in Flare (well, RH at the moment, but the principle is the same). I don't worry about branding or making it look pretty, just get the structure right, then sort out what the styles should actually look like in Flare.

Plus I can re-arrange and rename headings if necessary to minimise that sort of clean up in Flare later.

If there's a bunch of documents initially, I'll spend time writing macros in the first doc to automate some of the cleanup for the following ones.

After that, for small documents, ad hoc content and edits, then I'll copy/paste to notepad then into Flare and apply styles and formatting. (Or, the paste might be improved in Flare so you can strip inline formatting automagically, in which case skip the notepad step.)
Madeline
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by Madeline »

Thanks. OK - I'm going to try importing one of our documents this morning and see how that goes. The issue being *all* of our formatting in in-line currently other than use of the standard heading styles (which we then apply inline formatting to for different sections). On the plus side, we don't update most of our manuals so I don't need to import a lot of legacy content.
SteveS
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by SteveS »

Spend a bit of time getting the import process right.

Strip as much out of word as you can, it will make the import cleaner. The ultimate of course would be to cut and paste the word content into notepad and use that for the import, then restyle the document in Flare. That, of course, gives the purest results but comes at a cost of reformatting everything. Tables, of course, will need remaking. So you probably will look for something in between.

One thing I'd make sure I do is remove manual page breaks used to control word flow on the page. These can force topic breaks in Flare, so the topic will not flow.

There are a few topics on Word imports on the forum, and some of the stuff by Margaret contains some good stuff including some Word macros for preparing documents before the import that help.

HTH
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wclass
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by wclass »

Hi Madeline - since @Steve mentioned me I thought I should chime in with some suggestions. I am a Word/Flare user from way back (showing my age here - I have used both products since their first versions).

The advantage of importing Word content over cutting and pasting is that it gets content in and breaks it into relevant topics. The import does a better job of getting images and tables into Flare than copy/paste does. However, Flare relies on document structure to work out what should go where, so if you have used manual styles rather than at least some structure using styles, then the import will be a mess, often creating many span tags that make later editing much more difficult.

I usually think it is worth cleaning inline formatting from a document, applying headings 1 and 2 to specify topics, and then importing that. There will still be some fix-up work, but is usually better than lots of copy/paste.

Here is a list of steps I would take. Also, I usually import with the setting "Don't preserve Word styles" and discard the CSS file that is generated, applying my own after the import. You should also clear import options like "Avoid creating empty topics".
  • Turn off "automatically update" from all styles
  • Ensure headings are proper styles and not just inline formatting
  • Clear inline formatting from paragraphs by selecting then do Control-Spacebar. This will remove bold/italics, so if you wanted these you need to apply a character tag (Strong/emphasis, etc).
  • Set bold and italic inline formatting to character styles
  • Clear empty lines and headings
  • Remove manual page breaks (this affects new topics)
  • Check and clear unwanted section breaks
  • Turn off automatic numbering on headings
  • Make sure styles are created and used for paragraphs instead of inline formatting, such as code paragraphs, note paras, etc
  • Clear inserted cover pages (and most front matter)
  • Set the TOC to the right depth for importing (but often clear completely)
  • Disconnect the attached template and set it to Normal
Initially this seems like a long list, but it is quite quick to check just prior to import.
Margaret Hassall - Melbourne
Madeline
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by Madeline »

Thanks. Yes I am playing around with some content I imported and there's span tags everywhere which is a pain I'm discovering. I'm a bit confused by exactly what you mean by:

Clear inline formatting from paragraphs by selecting then do Control-Spacebar. This will remove bold/italics, so if you wanted these you need to apply a character tag (Strong/emphasis, etc).
Set bold and italic inline formatting to character styles

Does the second point mean reapply character styles in Word?

And as for your last point:
Disconnect the attached template and set it to Normal

That won't be a problem because the docs here don't even use templates....
wclass
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Re: Worth importing if no template or styles on existing Wor

Post by wclass »

Yes, I am saying that if you made something bold or italic in Word by clicking the icon on the toolbar, it will have inline styles applied. I recommend that instead you clear that manual styling and apply a character style instead if you want the formatting. You might consider waiting to apply the styles you need when you have the content in Flare.
Margaret Hassall - Melbourne
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