While still holding the left mouse button, use the right and up arrow keys to invoke InDesign’s Gridify feature to make an array so that each story is placed into its own smaller text frame. From here, hold the left mouse button and drag a large text frame. Place all the Word files using either File > Place (Command+D/Ctrl+D), or drag/drop them into InDesign so that the placegun is visible. It will just be a place to collect all the text so it can be taken into another file. Don’t worry-this won’t be the final file. In this instance, the files were placed alphabetically.īegin by creating a new InDesign file with a large page size (e.g. You are aware of the order that the files will be placed.The Show Import Options checkbox is turned off when placing files (or again, be prepared to face multiple prompts).All the fonts used in the Word files are loaded (or you should be prepared to face multiple font-warning prompts).The last line of each Word file is a paragraph return on its own and.This script requires that you first place all the Word files into an InDesign file. Solution Two: The Merge Textframes Script by Justin Putney

In a nutshell, the script provides a user interface that allows you to select a set of Word files, shuffle them into sequence, and then place them into a single InDesign story. This script certainly does the trick, and Peter’s site describes how to use the script better than I could here. Note the buttons to the right of the user interface. Solution One: The Place Docs Script by Peter KahrelĪbove – a sample of the script in action to import recipes for a cookbook. So to accomplish the task, we need a little help from a script.

True, the text can be placed into a document and then threaded by hand afterwards, but this is inconvenient, especially when you have hundreds of text frames to thread together. Regardless of which import technique you use, or which buttons you hold when placing text, InDesign will only place one story into a frame. By default, InDesign will allow content from each file to be placed into its own frame, but not into the same frame, and this came as quite as a surprise. A colleague recently asked me how to import 200+ Word files into one threaded story within InDesign.

Indesign to ms word