HTML blockquote seems like a hidden style in derived DOC file?

[rudyrucker]

I've been using Word for about thirty years, so this is a kind of advanced problem that I have today.



I have a booklength document which I created from an ebook I'm working on. I loaded my ebook's underlying large HTML file into Word, then saved as DOC to get a document. (I'm not using my original text file, as it changed a lot during the HTML editing).

The text looks fine, and my CSS styles seem to have come over intact.

But one thing is confusing. In my HTML I had a number of paragraphs that were enclosed in a <blockquote> </blockquote> tag so as to indent them, and these paragraphs were formatted in a special "epubtext_blockquote" style so as to control their justification and font size.

In my HTML-derived DOC file, the formerly blockquoted-material is indented like I want...BUT if I look in my DOC's styles, the epubtext_blockquote style has the paragraph left and right indents set to 0.

So if I now apply the epubtext_blockquote to a paragraph in my DOC, it has really no effect, at least not in terms of indents.

My former blockquotes also are showing up with extra space at the top and the bottom of the block, just as if my file were HTML.

But I can't figure out where the formatting commands for this are! They're not in the styles, and they're not in the individual paragraph formats---nor in any margin formats that I can see, although I'm not totally sure about this last claim.

Any ideas?

[macropod]

Hi rudyrucker,

It sounds rather like your epubtext_blockquote Style hasn't picked up all of the attributes it should have, but the paragraph formatting for the imported content in that Style has been respected despite this. What happens if you edit the epubtext_blockquote Style so that it acquires the correct attributes?

[rudyrucker]

Thanks for the comment, Macropod.

The epub_blockquote style is just holding some incidental attributes such as being in a 10 pt font and being aligned left rather than justified. It doesn't have any attributes relating to paragaph left and right indent.

And if I right click on one of my nice-looking transfromed-from-HTML-blockquote-into-Word-extended-quote paragraphs and select Styles and say "Update epub_blockquote to Match Selection," nothing at all happens to the epub_blockquote style.

The issue is that when Word loads an HTML file that has the blockquote tag in it, the blockquoted-paragraph has the proper-looking indent, but there is no place where I can see HOW Word is putting this format onto the paragraph.

I have my Display set to Show All Formatting Marks, so there's not a sneaky text box or something.

I wish there was a way to see the underlying "source code" of a Word file!

[macropod]

Hi rudyrucker,

In that case, it sounds as if the epubtext_blockquote Style might be inheriting properties from another Style, and the inherited properties are not explcitly stated.

As for 'a way to see the underlying "source code" of a Word file', you could look at Word's xml, which you can access by changing the file's extension from docx to zip.

[rudyrucker]

Thanks again Macropod.

Wow, I had no idea you could look that deep into a Word file by saving as docx, changing the extension to zip, unzipping it, then opening up, say, the styles.xml file with DreamWeaver to look inside.

But it doesn't really help.

Now I'm in InDesign turning my Word file into a book-quality PDF, and the phantom blockquote's margin indents that my Doc inherited from the HTML are gone so I'll have to put them in by hand.

Partly i can do this by changing the left and right indent for my "epub_extendedquote" style, but I'll have to visit each spot to have it skip a line at the top and bottom of the multi-paragraph extended quotes.