Pasting from Word into InDesign

Bold/italic text is one of the few parts of Microsoft Word styling that designers actually lament the loss of when transferring content from Word into InDesign. Word styles are generally poorly used/abused, and accordingly the default is to throw them all out when importing text. Here’s how to avoid losing the baby with the bathwater.

In InDesign, press ⌘+K (Ctrl + K) to bring up the Preferences dialog, then click through to the last pane, “Clipboard Handling”. At the bottom of this pane, under “When Pasting Text and Tables from Other Applications”, set Paste to “All Information (Index Markers, Swatches, Styles, etc.)

Some Word styling will now import — watch carefully to make sure nothing too stupid finds its way into your pristine InDesign document!