How to import Word docs that correspond to manual pages

[ccardimon]

In the project on which I'm working, the legacy material I have consists of about 30 separate Word files, each of which roughly corresponds to one page of the hardcopy reference manual.

What might be the best way to import these Word documents? Once I import these files, I don't have to import them again. I can work in Flare.

[LTinker68]

It's up to you. You can create 30 import files and import one Word file into each import file, or create one import file that imports all 30 Word files, or whatever. I'd recommend the latter since you're not going to be reimporting the files later, plus it'll only generate one import-related TOC and one import-related stylesheet (depending on what you're doing with styles on import).

Or you could use the one import file and import the files one at a time. That might be a bit easier if you want to rename/move any images imported instead of renaming/moving images for all 30 files after the import is done.

[ccardimon]

Thanks for the imput, Lisa.

[doc_guy]

Could you open the 30 files and combine them into a single WOrd doc, and then import that?

[ccardimon]

Could you open the 30 files and combine them into a single WOrd doc, and then import that?

Yes, I could. What would the advantages be?

[LTinker68]

Well, if you want to map Word styles then it might help to have them all in one big file so that you can clean up the styles and be consistent in the styles used. And if all the files have the same intro section, for instance, then you could delete all but one, which means you'd only get one topic for that intro section, instead of getting 30 topics with the same content, 29 of which you'd then want to delete anyway.

[SteveS]

My thoughts are that nothing handles Word documents as well as MS Word...

I'd try and combine all the Word documents (in Word), Strip out as much formatting as I can (even to the extreme of selecting all and using the clear formatting command) and only use styles I want to send to Flare (Headings 1 to 4, or whatever).

Then I'd do the Flare import, matching (but converting) heading styles and so on. You can split the Word document into seperate topics at whatever heading level you use to start your topics in the 'cleaned up' document.

Watch out for tables, and try and avoid inline styles!

That should give you a good basis for continuing to maintain the documentation in Flare.