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Tips to improve your Word (DOCX) imports

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When importing a Word document, or DOCX format, there are a couple things you can do prior to import that can improve the look of your document after import. These would be a) converting auto-text to plain text, and b) removing unneeded sections breaks. Below are steps on how to do both.

Converting auto text to plain text
This step will convert any auto text found in the Word document into plain text. Auto text usually includes items like numbered lists. For importing items like legal documents, this can be quite handy. To convert the auto text, you'll actually need to use Visual Basic but I promise its quite easy and only a few steps. Here is how to run it the process:

  1. Open the document in Word that you wish to convert
  2. Press ALT+F11 (Function+Option+F11 for MacOS)  to display the Visual Basic Editor
  3. On the View menu, choose Immediate Window and type the following: ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText and press Enter
  4. Close the Immediate Window
  5. Re-save the Word document

Remove unneeded section breaks
As to why you'd want to run this step, when you import a Word file into Wdesk, it creates a section in the Wdesk document for each 'Section Break' it find in your Word file. This often ends up creating many unwanted sections upon import. Furthermore, in Word you won't visibly see the Section Breaks unless you have non-printing characters turned on. This is how it looks in Word:



To prevent the import from creating all those pesky sections, you can simply remove the section breaks in Word prior to import. Here's how to go about it:

  1. In the Word file, choose Replace
  2. From this window, expand the Special drop-down menu to tell Word to find Section Break, like so:
  3. For the Replace with field, keep it blank, which will simply remove the section break when you run it.
  4. Then, either replace them one-by-one, or do a Replace All. Removing one-by-one or all is your discretion, of course, and depending on the size of the file and how many sections you want can determine if you should or want to remove all of them. 
  5. When finished, save the Word file

Now that one or both the above have been done, you can now import the newly saved Word document into Wdesk.

Hope both of these are helpful. If you do have any questions on the process or need anything else, just let me know and I'm happy to help. Happy importing!

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  • Greta Hoffmann

    Hi Mike, Two years ago at TEC in Tennessee, I went to a user session that talked about Importing long Word exhibits (it was one of the practical sessions on computers). It had a tips and tricks sheet that I've since lost. I'm wondering if you happen to have access to that? 

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  • venkat naresh yarlagadda

    Hi,

    Say If I have a table format in the word document, will it require any special steps i need to take care?

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  • Celeste Rasmussen Peiffer

    WOW!!  You have just saved me hours of time trying to format a 130 page agreement with "legal section numbers."  Thank you so much!!

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  • Mike

    Thanks for sharing, Celeste, and happy to hear it was a time saver. You're quite welcome. And welcome to the Community 😊

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  • Mike

    Fabulous news! We just rolled out a new enhancement to help mitigate too much section creation. You now can select which method of section creation on import.

    This new option for "Only when necessary" will collapse all content into as few sections as possible, to make it easier for customers to organize and edit their work within Documents without sorting through as many section breaks.

    If you wish to preserve the DOCX section breaks, you'll want to check the box for “From existing section breaks” when you import the file.

    Note that Section breaks will still be inserted where necessary based on how the Document handles section-level settings. This includes adding breaks for content that includes transitions between single and multi-column text, where headers and footers change, and for changes to page dimensions, orientations, margins, or page numbering.

    Thanks for your continued feedback on helping us improve this process. Holler with any questions and happy Friday!

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