Who knows! Even when you take pains to anchor graphics correctly, you get drastic reflow of graphics.Ģ) Graphics, especially TIFs and other bitmapped formats, tend to get automatically converted to RGB when imported, and then converted back out to CMYK for a “Press-Quality PDF.” That sounds ok at first glance, but when you preflight the resulting PQ-PDF you end up with built blacks for any text that was in the graphic, like 9 pt labels on pie charts. Graphics tend to “fly off” to other pages (in the words of one of my clients) because you’ll place a graphic on page 3 today but when you open up the document tomorrow, it could be on page 4 or 5 or 19. Here’s my list:ġ) Word isn’t a page layout program, so it’s more difficult and time consuming to get graphics to “stay put” on a page, wrap text around them, and control them. The question arose again recently on the InDesign Listserv, and one well-versed trainer/consultant, Bevi Chagnon, came up with such an eloquent answer that I needed to reprint it here (with her permission):Īs a consultant for the US Fed Govt, I have to come up with this justification every few weeks. And in a large company (or governmental body) that has Word on every machine, a manager is bound to wonder.

One such question is: Why should I use Adobe InDesign instead of Microsoft Word? It’s a valid question, given that Word appears to have a wide range of layout features.

A few perennial questions just keep popping up every year or so like clockwork.

Indesign to microsoft word