problem importing text

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FKNeedles

So far, I'm having a really difficult time importing text into Scribus. The only way I've been able to do this is to open the "Edit Text" window in Scribus, and cut and paste directly from my document one page at a time.

I'm self-publishing a book of poetry with lots of line breaks, various indentations, and titles.

I downloaded Scribus, because I want my self-published books to have a more professional look.

I've been looking around on YouTube, and reading lots of great articles on this forum, and I've learned a lot... but I can't seem to find anything specifically relating to my problem.

I downloaded LibreOffice because of the comments here.

I open Word document with LibreOffice, and save the file with an .ODT extension.

Then I create a Text Box in my Scribus file, then I click on: File – Import – Get Text – (Then here I pick the ODT extension file I'm trying to import into Scribus) and it imports of bunch of gibberish that looks like this:

PK####J^2 ''#mimetypeapplication/vnd.oasis.opendocument.textPK####J2.   
#Thumbnails/thumbnail.pngPNG
^
IHDR###߃r#7PLTE#####
#@#@%##% |+#^&#^-^#-##&##3#&9|(7#,;)##"!#("^1$@$()*'&&,;</! .A&3E4AR8AQ>J]C3'@5*L9'L:)A;0D?AJ@8]L:DDDFGJJIGGMREMYTL@

So then I tried: Page – Import – Select – (I pick the .ODT file I want to import) and at this point, a little "blue wheel" spins as if it's trying to import, but nothing happens... I've left it alone for over 15 minutes and longer, and nothing happens...

My questions:

What am I doing wrong?
Can I import more than one page at a time?
With poetry, I can see that I'll have to work with every single page anyway, however when I start importing prose, I'd like to be able to do large blocks of text at a time.

Thanks for your help. And thanks for this great forum. Sorry if I'm asking really basic stuff that's already been covered, I can't seem to find a post that covers my problem exactly.

GarryP

Welcome to the forum FKNeedles.

Text importing in Scribus can sometimes be a hit-and-miss process until you figure out the right settings for your document. The main setting you need is the "Importer" drop-down in the "Get Text" dialog.

From your post it looks like you have imported using the "Text Files" Importer. This importer simply takes what is in the file and tries to convert the contents into text. This is fine for TXT files - which only contain plain text - but not for ODT files. ODT files are not just simple text files, they have all kinds of formatting sequences in them to control how the text looks.

To import an ODT file, you should normally use the "Automatic" Importer. (The "OpenOffice.org Writer Documents" importer sometimes works but not always.) That generally works for most ODT documents.

It's worth keeping in mind that some formatting will be lost. Character formatting - as opposed to full paragraph formatting - can't yet be imported and bold and italic probably won't come through the process properly. You might also get various dialogs asking about fonts and styles but the answers to the questions posed will depend on the actual document.

Also, it's best to import in sections - chapters, etc. - so that you don't have problems later on with long text frame chains.

I hope this helps.

FKNeedles

GarryP,

Thank you so much! That worked!

GarryP

You're welcome.

Importing can sometimes be a bit awkward but once you've found the right settings you can normally just keep doing the same thing over again.