WD: Converting Adobe PageMaker Publications to Microsoft Word (177454)

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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

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.
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:

65416 Hardware and Software Third-Party Vendor Contact List, A-K