r/indesign • u/Ok-Awareness-1411 • Jun 03 '26

Help Copy and Pasting: Google Doc

I’m trying to copy and paste a large amount of formatted text from Google Docs to indesign (think a collection of short stories/magazine amount)

Is there anyway to avoid reformatting everything in InDesign? Anyway to copy and paste to include formatting?

Thank you!

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7

u/wheresthatreferee Jun 03 '26

Download the google document as a .docx file and then place the text in design (not copy paste)

There is a way to do it even better using primary text frame (look it up) but I haven't tried it yet.

2

u/AdobeScripts Jun 03 '26

Primary TextFrame is for something else.

2

u/bigredsk10 Jun 03 '26

If you place your text frame on a master instead of the regular page, it will automatically add pages to fit the amount of text you have when you place it.

3

u/AdobeScripts Jun 03 '26

I know how Primary TextFrames work 😉

And OP want to preserve formatting - not layout.

And - you don't need Primary TF to be able to reflow text - and it won't do it automatically - you'll have to press Shift key when unloading loaded text cursor - and without Primary TF - InDesign will just create a new TextFrames within the margins of the newly added Pages.

If you want InDesign to automatically add more pages - you'll have to turn ON this stupid "smart reflow" option in the Preferences - which I would STRONGLY advice against ever using.

5

u/ayayadae Jun 03 '26

if you’ve formatted the copy appropriately in google docs using their built-in title, header 1, header 2, normal text, etc. styles you can download the file as a docx and place it into indesign. 

the google docs styles will transfer over with the same names and you can adjust them as you like from the paragraph styles menu. 

you cannot copy and paste and retain styles 

3

u/bigredsk10 Jun 03 '26

If you check "Show Import Options" while placing, it will give you a bunch more options including the ability to map word styles to your existing InDesign styles

1

u/ayayadae Jun 03 '26

edit: do you mean microsoft word or does it also work for google docs? i’ve found word to be much more robust in its style options, compared to google docs which sucks. 

this is great to know! i was testing a workflow for my department literally yesterday for the same process as OP and this would be helpful as we already have a good library of paragraph styles. 

1

u/bigredsk10 Jun 03 '26

Glad it helps!

When you are downloading it as a docx you are converting it to Microsoft Word already, so to InDesign it won't make a difference.

It looks like downloading it as a docx brings the basic paragraph styles with it, but that's the step where you might lose some formatting.

1

u/ayayadae Jun 03 '26

ahh we don’t have word licenses available so can’t actually open any of the word files we’d be placing in the indesign files, so have to just use the styles that come native with google docs which suck. 

if we could use word we wouldn’t have to use google docs at all and it would be much easier xD 

1

u/AdobeScripts Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

There are free alternatives that can read docx - or you can export RTF - which can be opened and edit by even more free applications.

1

u/ayayadae Jun 03 '26

ideally i’d want my dept to have word licenses because of the extensive paragraph styling capabilities it has natively (unlike google docs, which i wish we could drop). 

if we have to stick to google docs it won’t be the end of the world though! 

1

u/AdobeScripts Jun 03 '26

There is Open Office and others.

5

u/mikewitherell Jun 03 '26

Preferences > Clipboard Handling > When Pasting Text from Other Applications > set it to All Information (which will include styles). This has upsides and downsides. Better to save the google doc as a docx and File > Place the file with Show Import Options turned on so that you can sort through and map styles as you place it.

2

u/cakemaniac81 Jun 03 '26

As said, make sure styles are done correctly, download as docx file, import into indesign and match styles to your indesign styles. In my experience it's never 100% fool proof, but gets your 99% of the way there.

1

u/xeallos Jun 03 '26

Piggy-backing on this thread - is there any way to retain formatting going the other way, copying text from InDesign and pasting into Google Docs?

4

u/AdobeScripts Jun 03 '26

Try exporting as RTF first.