In Design 4 Questions ! Pretty desperate

[WyoShel@hotmail.com]

My problem is I have to create a course guide catalog for the local high school it is approximately 200 pages long - with a lot of information - our printshop has asked that I use In Desgn 4 - I ordered the program and bought the books - but cannot figure out even where the best place to start - I typed most of the information into Microsoft Word thinking I could copy the info into In Design but it just doesn't look right of -there are alot tables etc., but, if of I could get a place to even start - is it a book or a document - I havn't even heard this terminology before and really don't want to let anyone down.

Thanks
Shelly - any help would be sooo greatly appreciated..

[Michael Beloved]

Indesign is more like Office Publisher and it does not function exactly like Office Word. But even in Word if you are moving tables from one Word document to another, there might be trouble and things might turn out weird. The same thing may happen if you move multiple columns from one Word document to the next.
My advice is that if you know that you will be finalizing in Indesign, do not make any multiple columns nor tables in Word. Do this after you move the information into Indesign.
Stated plainly, if you have to import anything into Indesign as your final document do not set up the formatting in Word except in a very primitive way and take your pains when you get into Indesign. Otherwise you will find that Indesign manhandles some of your stuff, changes some, moves some etc, and then you have to reformat a second time.
Indesign is very complex, much more than Word. If the book, paper or brochure is not too demanding in terms of its art work, you might just do the final in word, by importing the art work into Word. that is possible but it won't do if you have complex art. Word does have text boxes, which might be required on art pages but not in the particular way of Indesign.

[Howard Allen]

What Michael said.

Do the least amount of formatting possible in Word. If you can, instead of spending time making tables in Word, just tabulate your table data. You can do all the formatting and table construction in InDesign. You'll find that InDesign's "Place..." command (File menu) is your best friend. Use that command to import Word documents (and other text documents) as well as images. The Place command lets you control how tables and tabulated data are imported, and whether or not to include Word formatting (I never do).

Concentrate on learning how to use Master Pages and Paragraph Styles. These will save you a lot of work in the long run.

FWIW, I do a lot of my text composing right in InDesign. For me, Word only comes into play when I place documents sent to me by other people who do use Word.

I learned InDesign mostly from Galen Gruman's InDesign CS Bible (Wiley) combined with lots of hands-on experience. I love it. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a joy to use, just because everything seems to work the way it should, unlike some other programs I could name. Creating PDFs of your INDD documents for final output is completely bomb-proof in my experience. (Qualification: I don't do any CMYK colour work, so my experience with InDesign is probably easier than some other people's, and I can't comment on that end of things.)

BTW: welcome to the forum!

[annc]

I second what Howard has said, and I do CMYK work in InDesign. I get a lot of documents formatted in Word, and what I do is print them so I have an idea of where the author thinks everything belongs, then copy and paste the entire text into BBEdit (a Mac text editor - a decent Windows text editor will do a good job for you if you're not a Mac user). This gets rid of any Word formatting or other nasties, and ensures you have a decent text file to work with. It also converts the Word tables to tab-delimited paragraphs that come - mostly - fairly cleanly into InDesign, ready for conversion to InDesign tables.

Make sure any graphics are converted to CMYK in Photoshop before placing in InDesign, and don't import any CMYK JPEGs, because you will get some nasty colour surprises if you do. InDesign will happily accept native Photoshop files, so this is what I always use.

Oh, and do ask the printshop if they will accept PDFs for printing. Most commercial printers do, and it's a lot safer for everyone, as long as the designer and the printer's prepress department agree on the PDF Preset.

And welcome to the forum.

[ktinkel]

I see you have gotten good advice.

I used to produce publications for a U.N. affiliate. Articles would arrive in every sort of format, but mostly Word files. As Ann said, first I printed them out so I could see the accents, itals, etc., then saved them (from Word, usually) as plain text. That is what went into the layout program.

It is forty-thousand percent easier (well, allowing for hyperbole!) to set up your own styles and apply them rationally than to try to co-exist with the ones that flow in with Word files.

Do use Place — not copy and paste — to get text (or images or anything else) into InDesign.

And as others have said: Welcome to the forum!

[Michael Rowley]

Shelly:

I typed most of the information into Microsoft Word thinking I could copy the info into In Design but it just doesn't look right

There's an extensive Help item in InDesign on what InDesign takes over Word's formatting and what it does not take over. It's a useful guide to those that can get the details of InDesign's advice into their heads, but for those of us that can't adsorb such details, it's best to minimize Word's formatting until you're quite sure InDesign will accept that particular feature of Word.

[don Arnoldy]

Originally Posted by WyoShel@hotmail.com

My problem is I have to create a course guide catalog for the local high school it is approximately 200 pages long

Not really the best starter project—you are jumping in to the deep end. Buy a bathing cap, smile, and go for it—-feet first!

is it a book or a document

You want to create a new document—"book" has a specific meaning in InDesign (a collection of documents that act as one).

--don