🚀 go-pugleaf

Speculative answer based on things I half-remember: sometimes Word text is coloured because of a font-style, sometimes it's coloured because mark-up from track changes is being rendered as a condition. When the text you import drags a condition with it, you can change/apply FrameMaker paragraph definitions till you're blue in the face :-}

Take a look at some text with a problem colour; put the cursor in the text and see if there's any indication of a condition in the status-bar. The keyboard short-cut for "clear conditions on selected text" is esc, q, U - thanks, Arnis!

Simply importing the file is almost certainly a bad idea, but you've decided that already. Other contributors will probably have more to say about the different strategies for getting clean, usable, formatted content out of .doc files. fwiw, ymmd, and for documents without tables: I use a Word macro to tag each paragraph with its style-name, then save as text and import the result as MML.

Thank you, NP.

No, these were not colored in Word due to change tracking, and there is nothing in the "status bar" except 'normal,' or the name of the style I apply to it (which affects everything except the color).

Yet I have just discovered if I copy the recalcitrant paragraph and paste in again as text, the color of the framemaker style for the paragraph does take hold. I just can't do this for every line/paragraph, would take years.

Can anyone tell me the simplest and most effective way to get a Word doc into FM with best fidelity to original yet have it be natively editable in FM?

Thanks.

regards,

stevenjs
____________________________
"I am but an egg."
--Stranger in a Strange Land

Steven,
If you're copying and pasting, you're also pasting Word control characters in, which isn't a great thing to do and may be at the root of your problem.
A couple possible new workflows, and by extension, a way to clean things up:
Try saving as RTF in Word, and opening that file in FM so it runs through the FM import filter. From FM, SaveAs MIF, to clean up hidden characters. Open the MIF file and copy and paste from that into your FM parent file, or just import FM formats form your template file and go forward. (the SaveAs MIF would be the way to clean up your existing file(s) too.

Art, thanks. That is not working either. There are 'text boxes' in the Word doc that have a background color and stroke, as well as colored text within. Following the RTF Word > Import to FM > Save as MIF > Copy Paste from MIF to template or import formats from template to MIF procedure you suggest leaves me with horizontal lines of an unknown nature and peculiar spacing as well for all the text that had been inside the Word 'text boxes.'

I found that if I select a paragraph with the strange lines that had been inside the Word text box and applying an FM style the weird lines and spacing disappears and some of the colors come through, others do not. None of the bolding comes through.

I am also tasked with recreating the text boxes (there has to be a very close fidelity to the original Word doc) and more problems there. For instance (if not obvious, I am an FM newbie), if I draw a text box and use the 'pen' tool selection to apply a 1 pt. black stroke to the frame, I am unable to then apply a backgrond color to the text frame without losing the border stroke. Or in the reverse, if I apply a background color to the frame, I am unable to apply a different stroke/border color. This is not a conversion issue, but I cannot find a syllable on the subject in FM Help.

Also, if I click on the color icon in the tool palette, it shows a partial list and I am unable to scroll to select a color lower down in the list.

In any event, recreating colors, bolding, text frames with background color and different border/stroke color for each of dozens upon dozens of text frames is a mountain of work, and that is only one of many such docs in need of conversion to FM.

Any and all help or guidance here is much appreciated.

regards,

stevenjs
____________________________
"I am but an egg."
--Stranger in a Strange Land

If I were you, I'd not use text boxes at all; I'd use single cell tables because the ruling and shading is much easier to control.

Also, if you create a tag that is only used as an anchor point for tables (or anchored frames) and doesn't carry any text, it's much easier to add or delete text in the main text flow.

I assume that you know already that you should be controlling the text with paragraph tags and character tags, not attempting to do Ctrl-B and other overrides.

Art

Art,

No cntrl B's. Don't know what you mean by "tag that is only used as an anchor point for tables (or anchored frames) and doesn't carry any text, it's much easier to add or delete text in the main text flow." Especiall the part "doesn't carry any text." What is the purpose of such a tag or table or frame if it has no text?

Are you saying a text frame cannot have a different border color from its background color? Only a table cell can?

I find it hard to believe one must virtually redo the entire document in FM. This is a nightmare.

stevenjs
____________________________
--Stranger in a Strange Land

Steven,

What Art is recommending is to use a special paragraph tag to hold
only an anchored frame or table (i.e. a container) and not to drop
those items into existing paragraphs that contain text. This way you
have more control in the placement of these frames & tables and how
they behave at page breaks.

FM's quirks currently do not allow frames (text, anchored and graphic)
to have different properties for borders and fills. You can either use
tables or insert one inside in the other (using different properties -
outside has borders set and inside has fill set).

It's usually much easier to copy & paste plain text from Word and then
re-tag in FM. Word is not a publishing system and should only be
considered a content generation tool in an FM workflow. Using styles
consistently in Word and having corresponding styles mapped in an FM
template goes a long way in making imported Word documents much easier
to handle. Avoid any special constructs that have no equivalents in
FM. The Filters.PDF in the FM documentation folder has a list of
features that shows what gets converted by the import filters (see
p.14) and that should be a guide as to what features to avoid using in
Word documents for import into FM.

Steven:

You may (or admittedly, may not) want to rethink your workflow from the top.

More specifically, you may prefer to start by worrying less about replicating where and how content appears in Word.

That may enable you to quit trying to replicate those specific behaviors in FrameMaker and instead focus on presenting the information in a way that reaps the advantages in stability and control FrameMaker provides.

As such, you wouldn't need to "redo" the Word documents, but rather capture the information from Word then use FrameMaker to format it in ways that are often superior to Word's...

Or so it seems...(?)

Cheers & hope this helps,
Riley

Arnis, thank you. Yes, if I were doomed to continue originating documents in Word, your work flow suggestion (and R.VanDyke's) makes wonderful sense. But I'm converting to leave that horrible, abusive, out-of-control application behind altogether.

You said: "use a special paragraph tag to hold only an anchored frame or table (i.e. a container) and not to drop those items into existing paragraphs that contain text. This way you have more control in the placement of these frames & tables and how they behave at page breaks."

I am just getting a handle on getting FM tags to behave like Word styles, and simply have no idea how to go about getting a para tag to "hold a table." Can you step me through that?

looking forward to hearing from you,

stevenjs
________________________
"I am but an egg."
--Stranger in a Strange Land

Arnis, I don't know how to "simply create paratags" that create a table. I see no way in the interface to do that.

I can create a table tag and apply that to Table > Insert Table (which is what I've done). Is that what you mean?

All it takes is piece of cloth to blind one completely.

stevenjs
________________________
"I am but an egg."
--Stranger in a Strange Land

Steven,

In Word, tables are IN a paragraph; thus, the paragraph sign for the paragraph that "contains" the table displays AFTER the table.

In FrameMaker, tables are objects that "hang" from the preceding paragraph. If you show text symbols, you will see a character (I think it is a T) just before the paragraph sign, which is BEFORE the table. This character represents the table which displays below the paragraph.

Thus, when the others talk about creating an empty paragraph to contain the table, they mean create a paragraph without text (that is, a blank line) and create the table while the insertion point is in the empty paragraph (that is, at the beginning of the line).

Van

Steven,

As Van points out, create a brand new paratag using the Paragraph
Designer. Give it a name that is meaningful to you and insert this
paragraph wherever you want a table, anchored frame, etc. Then within
this empty paragraph insert the actual table or anchored frame object.

If you set the View > Text Symbols menu option, then you'll be able to
see representations of the paragraph markers and symbols used for the
anchored frame and table insertion points.

Steven,

Simply create paratags called "Table" and "AFrame" or something
similar that is meaningful to you. Then use these paratags whenever
you need to insert tables or anchored frames. Don't put any text in
these paragraphs.

For the properties of the Table paratag, you can use a trick to ensure
that the table starts exactly at the tag and doesn't hang below. Set
the Table paratag's Space Below to a negative value the same as your
table's Space Above value (which also should be a negative number,
e.g. -12pt). This will then force the table to ride up the specified
amount and start exactly where the paratag is placed. This is quite
useful at the tops of pages so you don't get an unwanted empty line.

Arnis, I don't see the advantage of a paratag over Insert Table, which is one step rather than two. The inserted table has the paratag for text going into the single cell, and the table/cell itself is defined as I want it.

In any event, thank you, gentlemen, for helping out with this. I will no doubt be back with more questions ;-)

regards,

Steven
____________________________
--Stranger in a Strange Land

I'm a relitive newbe too, but I think I know what ther're talking about. Just don't ask me to explain it.

Turn on view "text symbols" and play with it.

Steven,

It's a baby step towards structured use. One day the light bulb will
go on.