Converting Quark Documents to Word

Gail has several important documents that are only available in QuarkXPress. She wonders if there is a way to convert Quark documents to Word documents or a way to import a Quark document into a Word document.

There are a couple things you can try, each of which has strengths and weaknesses depending on the characteristics of the document that needs converting. If the Quark document consists of a single threaded story, a Quark user can easily export the Quark document as an RTF document that can be opened in Word.

If the Quark document is more complicated, the Word user will receive multiple bits and pieces as separate RTF files. This means more work in Word, as you put the bits and pieces together to create the finished document. In addition, any images will be separate files that can be placed within the Word document.

Another option is to use Quark to create a PDF file of the document. Assuming you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat, you can then load the PDF file and use Acrobat to save the PDF as a Word document. The advantage to this approach is that you are using Acrobat for the conversion and it tries to preserve formatting and layout, and it creates a single document that includes images, tables, and so forth.

Regardless of which approach you choose, you will have a have lot of work to do once the document is in Word. None of the options described so far create an optimal "clean" Word document. You'll need to get rid of strange line breaks, create styles (or use an existing style sheet and apply styles), and do other general cleanup in order to get the final Word document you want.