Import from Word - style sheet scenarios

[wclass]

There are some known problems with stylesheets and Word at import time - see the related issue at:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 191#p39854

When importing, there are 2 main scenarios that I need to use on a regular basis (options 1 and 2), but the settings allow for more, which I think is causing a problem. Here is my main usage showing the different settings you can have on the Stylesheet tab of the import screen:

• 1. Legacy import - Stylesheet set (eg "myStyles.css"), "Preserve" cleared.
  I use this setup if I am doing a once-off import and I want to get information in and use it with my existing project, with any further editing to occur in Flare. This is plain and it works, but if there are styles in the import document that don't exist in the CSS, they are lost on import - not usually a problem. If I really want a style retained from the import, I'd update my CSS file and try again. This works, and I use it often.
• 2. Regular re-import - Stylesheet "blank", "Preserve" set.
  I use this when I'm importing a Word document(s) that will be maintained in Word (probably by others) but I want to generate webhelp as well for easier searching. I just want to get the information and styles in as set in the original document and run a compile. The project might have several import documents, but imported text is not edited in Flare. This setup creates a stylesheet file with the same name as the import and links all the geenrated topics to it. I leave this set and every time I re-import the file, the whole lot gets updated and there is no problem re-generating the web help. This works.
• 3. Legacy, with style
  Stylesheet set (eg "myStyles.css"), AND "Preserve" set.
  This is like a legacy import, but I'd use this if a document had a whole bunch of styles in it and I wanted to use Flare to generate the style entries for me. I map it to an existing style sheet so that it works with the rest of the project, but with "preserve" set it implies that it will create any new styles for me. Initially this works, but there are bugs introduced when you try to re-import a document. Now you might say a true legacy document should never need to be re-imported, but you often have to when you are doing the initial set up.
  Theoretically this should work, but from a Best Practice point of view, I would recommend option 1 and make sure you update the CSS file with all the required styles yourself.
• 4. Just the text import
  And of course, there is the final combination - no stylesheet mapped on import and don't preserve the styles. All the text is imported with some arbitrary default styles - it works but is not much use! It does leave you free to connect it to another style sheet - but you could do that using scenario 1!

Many versions ago I tried combining option 2 with option 3. That is, I imported a Word document and created a new style sheet from the document, then I updated the Import file options to re-use the recently created stylesheet. This caused the file to be deleted, a variation of the scenario 3 bug. I reported it back then, but I think the current functionality still has problems. If you want to get a style sheet built, do an option 2 import, save the stylesheet, then start over.

What I really want to do is generate Word files for review, and then import the updated information back into the topics. Now the lagacy scenario is the closest, but at the moment it is still quicker to cut and paste. And yes, I know about X-Edit but while that is a single-topic at a time function, it is of no use.

So what do other people use the import function for, and how much post-processing time does it cost you?

PS - and I'd still like to have more control over the mapping of paragraph and character styles, but that will have to be another post.