Before We Begin

Before we begin this tutorial, there are just a few things you should know.

Word Files for This Tutorial

The steps for this tutorial involve importing Word files into Flare's Austin template project. The files have been prepared and are ready for you to download to your local device. Download the zip file from:

https://docs.madcapsoftware.com/tutorial-assets/flare/Word-Import-Files.zip

Extract and save the two documents to any location you want. Go ahead and open the documents to see what they look like. The documents include some content, paragraph styles, an embedded image, and a list for importing.

Installation of Word

For the best performance Microsoft Word should be installed on your computer. However, this is not an absolute requirement. See Enabling Import/Export Without Word Installed.

Importing Methods

There are several different ways you can add Word documents into Flare Desktop, and during the import process you can specify through options how you want those files to handle the conversion.

Since we are basing this tutorial on Flare’s Austin template, we are focusing on dragging and dropping files into the existing project and then going over some importing options.

The topics in the Help system about importing Word provide details on all import methods and options. The approach you ultimately adopt really depends on your project and workflow. See Importing Word Files and Adding a Word Import File.

But regardless of method, importing Word documents encompasses a basic two-step process: 1) creating an import file (stored in the Project Organizer Import folder), and 2) populating and using file settings to perform the import into Flare Desktop.

Using Clean Word Documents

The intention of this tutorial is not to show you how to prepare your Word documents for import, but rather to step you through a common scenario for importing your document files into Flare Desktop. It is important to keep in mind that the cleaner a Word document is before import, the cleaner the documentation is after the import process. A clean document means:

• Using an error-free Word document.
• Removing any inline formatting.
• Using paragraph and/or character styles in Word.

For more information, see Preparing Word Documents.