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Scribus => Beginner Talk => Topic started by: Jeff in CA on October 05, 2021, 08:52:15 PM

Title: Page > Import Pages question
Post by: Jeff in CA on October 05, 2021, 08:52:15 PM
I have a large book document (387 pages) I've created and formatted in LibreOffice, and am now trying to find the best way to import the text into Scribus. Importing the whole document via Get Text was not successful, even after waiting 2 hours - as many before me have found (was not surprised, but had to try once). It appears the best option is to import small blocks of text (one poster here suggested that 30 pages is about all Scribus seems to be able to handle at once).

Given that the text I want to import is a single 387 page .odt file, I have yet to find a way to easily import just a section or a chapter (or any set number of pages), and can't find a way to break up the .odt document into smaller individual files.

Copy and paste is one option, but is not ideal for a number of reasons including that it does not retain most of the formatting.

There does not seem to be a way to specify the number of pages to import when using Get Text; it appears that you have to import the entire document or not use this method.

I thought that the solution might be via the Page dialogue (Page > Import), but this did not work either. I could enter the file name in the From Document field, but could not find a way to insert the number of pages in the Import Page(s) field - no matter whether I single or double -clicked in the field box, it doesn't seem to be enabled for some reason and I couldn't place the cursor to enter the desired page range. Any thoughts as to what I am doing wrong here? And might Page>Import be a viable solution?

Any other ideas as to the best options for me to import specific text blocks from a large LO .odt file without using copy>paste would be appreciated.
Title: Re: Page > Import Pages question
Post by: Nermander on October 06, 2021, 08:14:11 AM
As far as I know Page import is for importing pages from another Scribus document.
Title: Re: Page > Import Pages question
Post by: Jeff in CA on October 06, 2021, 07:20:58 PM
Thanks Nermander. Guess I'll have to go with copy>paste to import sections of my libreoffice document into scribus, and then re-format most of it.

I was extremely happy to see that a test copy>paste (LO to Scribus) preserved the smart (typographical) quotation marks in my text, a big relief as there are more than a thousand in total and in LO it took quite some time to format them correctly. Sadly, citation numbers were there but they lost the superscript formatting I did in LO and I'll have to re-do those in scribus (and there are just over 1000 of those....). And of course all the other formatting except for smart quotes.
Title: Re: Page > Import Pages question
Post by: AdmFubar on October 06, 2021, 10:20:47 PM
Have you tried the menue entry File/Import ?? This would bring in all your text. You will need to make enough pages with text frames in them.
Title: Re: Page > Import Pages question
Post by: Jeff in CA on October 07, 2021, 04:43:25 AM
AdmFubar:

File > Import's options for text are Get Text or Append Text. This brings up the same dialogue box as right-click > Get Text. As I understand it, there are almost always at least a few ways of doing the same thing in Scribus, but each one brings up the same pathway. I tried both ways.

Thanks for the suggestion though.