WD: Converting Adobe PageMaker Publications to Microsoft Word

ID: Q177454

The information in this article applies to:

WARNING: The information in this article has not been confirmed or tested by Microsoft. Some or all of the information in this article has been taken from unconfirmed customer reports. ANY USE BY YOU OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS ARTICLE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. Microsoft provides this information "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

SUMMARY

Microsoft does not supply a converter for Adobe PageMaker publications. The methods described in this article provide customers with background information of how they might export PageMaker publications to a form that can be read by Microsoft Word. Customers should be referred to Adobe PageMaker for support of how to do this.

MORE INFORMATION

Some Background About Adobe PageMaker

PageMaker publications contain both text and graphic objects. Graphic objects in PageMaker behave analogously to frames in Word and appear with similar small square "handles" on the edges and corners of the object. These can be "floating" or in-line, held in the text stream. Text objects, called "stories," behave analogously to Text Boxes in Word. Stories can stand alone on a page or be "threaded" from one area of a page to another or across pages. When selected, a text block appears similar to this: 

 #___________________________________()___________________________________#
   Microsoft does not supply a converter for Adobe PageMaker publications.
   The following method can be used to export PageMaker publications to a
   form that can be read by Word.
 #________________________________________________________________________#
                                     ()
where () represents the small semi-circular "windowshade" handles for the top and bottom of the story box and # represents the selecting handles for the text block itself. In a threaded story, the top center handle will contain a plus (+) sign, indicating that the text block is contiguous with a text stream appearing previously in the publication. You might also see a red downward-pointing triangle in the bottom windowshade handle, indicating that the text continues beyond the bottom edge of the text block.

PageMaker does not see text blocks that appear sequentially on a page as in any way contiguous. It is therefore not possible in versions of PageMaker earlier than 6.5 to export all stories in a PageMaker publication to a single file. Each story must be exported and saved as a separate file.

To Export a PageMaker Story

1. Select the text block, and on the Edit menu, click Edit Story. 

   You will see the text in a screen that looks very similar to Word's
   Normal View with the Style Area displayed.
2. On the File menu, click Export, and then click Text. 

   You will get a dialog box proposing a file name and folder, plus the
   options in Save As Type box for Text or Rich Text Format. To retain the
   formatting in the text block, select Rich Text Format. PageMaker's RTF
   export is quite good and Word will read the majority of the text
   formatting effects created in PageMaker. Export each story this way, and
   then these files can be opened in Word by one of the following ways:

   On the File menu, click Open.

   -or-

   On the Insert menu, click File, select the PageMaker file, and then
   click OK.
Adobe PageMaker, version 6.5, can export a publication to a single HTML file by clicking Export on the File menu. Each text block and graphic will be placed in a cell in a full-page HTML table, in an attempt to duplicate the layout of the PageMaker publication. This HTML file may be opened and edited in Word, but the result may require considerable touchup.

In PageMaker version 6.5, the graphic images can be exported as stand-alone TIFF or JPEG files. In all versions of PageMaker, they can be copied to the destination application on the Windows Clipboard, which is often a better option. Graphic objects created in PageMaker, such as lines, circles and boxes, are proprietary to PageMaker and cannot be exported as graphics or transported to other applications via the Clipboard.

PageMaker is manufactured by Adobe, a vendor independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's performance or reliability.

For information about how to contact Adobe PageMaker, query in the Knowledge Base for one of the following articles: 

   ARTICLE-ID: Q65416
   TITLE     : Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, A-K
The third-party contact information included in this article is provided to help you find the technical support you need. This contact information is subject to change without notice. Microsoft in no way guarantees the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

Additional query words: word8 word97 

Keywords          : kb3rdparty kbgraphic 
Version           : WINDOWS:2.0,2.0a,2.0a-CD,2.0b,2.0c,6.0,6.0a,6.0c,7.0,7.0a,97
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: April 8, 1999