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Footnotes from Word into Quark 1

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gupy

Technical User
Apr 12, 2002
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Hi!

Got 300 pages with about 200 footnotes in MS Word and need to import them into Quark 5.0. How to manage this? It seems like something impossible. Any Xtensions?

Thx

Gupy@siol.net
 
Hi,

The only way I know how to import Word text is to make a text box in quark, choose File>Get Text (command-E), and choose the Word document. You'll lose all your formatting, but that's part of the joy.....
 
Its a part of a HUGE joy, yes. I spent 20 hours on those footnotes. To inser them manually. What a joy! then... What for do we have computers and software?

gupy
 
Actually, if you create an automatic text box when creating a new document in Quark, you can keep the Word formatting more or less intact by making sure you have the MS Word Import XTension loaded (it is by default when you install Quark 5.0). I'm not sure about footnotes though...more manual insertion I guess! Check out Quark's website for it's catalog of XTensions, maybe one will do what you need.

Another route to try is XML. I know the web pages Word exports to seem to be heavily based on XML, so maybe you can use the XML Import feature of Quark in some way. Having said that, it's buggy as heck and doesn't work like it says in the documentation. Maybe Quark 5.1.......
 
May be ... or may be not.

Ive already tried all those xmls and xtensions... I must just say: THEY ARE NOT WORKING.

The only solution which I foun ind my 15-day not-sleeping-period is manual inserting.
Huh???

And I wonder... Are footnotes really so never-used? I mean... Is Quark made for text... or hm, for programming games? :)

Can InDesign or other desktop publishing progs work with footnotes?

Have a nice day!

Gupy
 
One of the problems is that Word treats footnotes as a special kind of linked object, like headers, footers, or automatic numbering, and it seems to get lost when it's imported. (If it didn't , what would Quark want to do with it? Bottom of corresponding page? End of story?)

I would suggest cutting all the footnotes into a separate text file and putting linked text boxes with runaround on (vertical text alignment set on bottom) at the bottom of the page. Assign whole story a footnote text style. Then import footnote file into the first box. Resize for more room or squeeze it down for less, and use the "shift-enter" command as needed to force remaining copy to next box. Then all you have to do is keep footnotes on same page as appropriate text.

I believe some style protocols also allow footnotes to be listed as a block at the end of the story, which would be more convenient from a production standpoint, though less so for readers.

At least it won't be one footnote at a time.
 
Help! Xperts alert! Footnotes in Word - can't they go into QuarkXPress 3.32? or any later version? Please tell me it's possible! I'm laying out a 100-page magazine with 100's of footnotes and I've only got 9 days...
Any ideas?
 
Okay, still think you should take my advice above: make a set of linked boxes at the bottom of your page (footnote area). Copy the footnotes as a block (see above), then shift-enter at end of each to force next one into next box. This is assuming that you do want footnotes at bottom of appropriate page. You may have to shift-enter more than once to force some footnotes along a couple of boxes to make them line up on same page as the citation, or shift-enter only after the set of citations for that page.

Regular text is in linked boxes above (regular page area) so be sure to pour that in first, so you'll know where it goes. Start at the front and move to the back, so that if footnotes need extra space, the copy and footnotes are both "squeegeed" back

One thing that might make formatting easier is if the Word formatting is all by added bold and added italic (instead of specific named bold and italic variants). That way they will import into your footnote style, and you can do a find/replace font thingy at the end. If your writer has already changed to "true fonts" instead of "styled fonts", there's not a lot you can do that way.

Sorry, there's no magic bullet on this, only ways to reduce the grunt work. "If it was easy, everybody would do it... and they'd be the competition..."
 
Additional thought: in a case like this, you basically have to think ahead so you won't get in your own way. That means having style sheets (esp. character styles) set up and Word copy-cleaned for the way you want it -- even changing the Word stylesheets so it will import cleanly (a lot of writers leave the copy in Normal style, which probably isn't what you want here. You can redefine Quark's normal style, or Word's, or give all the copy a new Word stylename to match the stylesheet in Quark).

If you don't set things up ahead of time, you wind up doing what I call "saddling the moving horse" -- every change you make forces you to deal with the fallout of the last change you made, so you are continuously self-correcting rather than moving ahead. Pain in the neck, and you don't get as much done.
 
Best bet is to convert those footnotes to endnotes first. Do this in Word. Then copy the end notes to another document in Word and automatically number then (assuming they are only 1 paragraph each) using a Word macro. Word macros are written in Visual Basic for applications and a numbering macro is pretty easy to do--I'm not a programmer and I did one.
Then code the footnote numbers as <+>1<+> if you want superscripting. Also code for italic <I> <I>.
Now when you pull them into quark they will come in as one continuous stream. You can put footnote boxes on each page and link them all, then adjust as necessary to get them on the right page/column. There is no easier way to do this that I know of. That's why Quark is such a great program, don't cha know?

I've never been able to afford/try all the various extensions.. maybe there is a better way, but I don't know it.

Now if you were using Framemaker, footnoting would be automatic, more or less. But not in Quark.
 
We haven't had much trouble with footnotes coming across.
We are using Quark V4.1 we open the Word file save as DocumentName.mcw, change the format to word 5.1
Then in Quark "get text" to our linked text box.

Maybe that method might work better??

Marcus
 
May I ask how you made the footnotes in Word in the first place? Were they manual or software coded?
 
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