Exporting text from an Indesign CS file.

mudfrog · #1 November 8th, 2005, 09:28 AM

Hello people!

I've been asked by a member of staff here at work about the possibility of exporting text out of an indesign file and into word.

Does anybody know if this is possible. I'v e had a look but can't find anything that looks like it would do the job.

Many thanks in advance,

Rich

Perseus · #2 November 8th, 2005, 02:01 PM

Hello Rich, try exporting the text as Rich Text Format

Then opening the .rtf file in Word.

mspain77 · #3 November 8th, 2005, 09:19 PM

Hey Rich-
you can just copy and paste. you'll have to adjust the font and size, etc.

Perseus · #4 November 8th, 2005, 09:40 PM

Does copying and pasting retain elements such as spacing? I think that may be why exporting as an .rtf would help. Try both and see what happens

mudfrog · #5 November 9th, 2005, 03:28 AM

Thanks guys.

But I'm really not an expert when it comes to Indesign CS.
The file will have text boxes and image boxes throughout the document so all the text is not all in one text box. So I need to be able to scrape the text out of all the text boxes and then import them into word. Insome sort of order

Copy and pasting is fine for the odd text box here and there but to do that in the whole document would be really time consuming.

To be honest I don't think it can be done but thought I would ask the question

Cheers,

Rich

Perseus · #6 November 9th, 2005, 07:28 AM

Rich, are all of your text boxes linked? If so, all you have to do, is take the text tool (T), click in the first text box, go to Edit > Select All (this should select all the text in the document if all the boxes are linked together) then go to File > Export. Export as a Rich Text Format (.rtf). This document will open in Word. I believe this is what you want. Try it out!

mudfrog · #7 November 9th, 2005, 07:44 AM

No unfourtunatly the text box's arn't linked together

I have sort of found a way to do it

By Exporting the file as a .pdf and then Save As either .doc, .rtf or .txt.
Seems to work by putting all the paragragraphs together with the exception of one of the pages where there are two columns of text both next to each other and instead of reading the text down the column, it reads it right across the page and therefore groups both columns of text together which is a bit freaky

But I thinks this might be the only way. This is just for translation purposes so they just want to be able to get the text out to a translator without all the images etc...

Thanks again for all your suggestions

it has been greatfully received.

Cheers,

Rich

Perseus · #8 November 9th, 2005, 08:36 AM

Great! I'm glad you found a way. We all learned something!