Word Docs to Flare

[jbranigan]

I'm new to Flare.
I have many MS Word documents that need to go into Flare and I'm a little confused.
What exactly defines a project?
Is each document its own project?
Thanks

[wclass]

There are several ways to import Word docs into Flare - one way actually creates a whole new project from the single Word document, however, you can create one project and then import several documents.

I usually create a new project, based on a template of my liking, and then import Word docs using the function found in the Project Organizer.

- display the project organizer
- right-click on the Imports folder and select Add MS Word import file
- work your way through the tabs to add a document, set your options, etc.

At this point, you can add an import file one for each Word document, OR, you can list all the documents you want in the one import file.
I tend to create separate imports for each doc because then it is easier to re-import one file if needed. Also, if there are multiple files listed, the styles only from the first are used - if all you Word documents are based on the same template then this would be OK.

[SteveS]

Short answer is...
...it's up to you!

To answer the question I'd look at how I wanted to manage the output.

In a simple world, if all the documents are 'printed' (depending on your output) together then you'd import all the documents into a single project. If each document never shares space with another you might make a separate project for each.

You might find the documents group together, in which case you could create a project for each group. You can also put any common content in a separate project and use global project linking to bring the common content into other projects.

A good place to start is looking at your folder structure used to store the word documents...

[ChoccieMuffin]

And before you even THINK about importing from Word, work through your source Word docs and do as much cleaning up as possible. This saves a pile of tidying up inside Flare.

Remove multiple carriage returns
Remove in-line styling
Apply consistent styles
I'm sure others would be able to give a fuller list.

[dorcutt]

Stripping out the auto-numbering created by multi-level list styles is super important. I also remove the header/footers. A ctrl-f for ^b and ^m does the trick, but make sure not to accidentally delete a stupid Word paragraph tag. Regardless, there will be cleanup of Word formatting. That's just how it goes.

For organization, I generally go by putting everything that needs to share more than a few topics worth of content (not stylesheets, etc) into the same project. This really helps you to take advantage of the single-sourcing capabilities of Flare.