Importing Word Documents

When importing Word documents, Author-it uses the headings in the document to identify where new topics need to be created in the Author-it book. When Author-it identifies a heading in the Word document, it creates a new topic for the book.

During the import, Author-it creates the topics in the book at levels corresponding to the heading levels in the Word document. If Author-it identifies a missing level between two headings in the Word document, a topic place holder is added in the book. For example, if the Word document has a heading at level 1 (with or without content) followed by a heading level 3, then Author-it creates a topic place holder (an empty topic) in the book at level 2. The behavior of inserting topic placeholders for missing levels occurs for both increasing heading levels and decreasing heading levels in the Word document (refer to the examples 1 and 2).

Topic place holders are added because the structure in the Author-it book does not allow gaps when moving between most levels; the exception is where heading 1 follows another level. When a level 1 heading follows another heading level (refer example 3) topic place holders are not added to the book. For example, the Word document has heading level 3 followed by heading level 1. In this example, Author-it does not add a topic placeholder at level 2 because it assumes you intentionally want to move back to a top level heading).

The following examples describe the behavior of inserting topic place holders for missing heading levels in the Word document. The examples show one missing level, but the behavior of inserting the required number of topic place holders is the same if there is more than one missing level.

Example 1 Increasing levels: describes the behavior moving from heading 1, to heading 2, to heading 3, to heading 4, or any levels that are moving in this direction.

Example 2 Decreasing levels: describes the behavior moving from heading 4, to heading 3, to heading 2, to heading 1, or any levels that are moving in this direction.

Example 3 Heading 1 and decreasing levels: describes the behavior when heading 3 or 4 (or other level) is followed by heading 1

The topic place holders are added to the book to identify missing levels in the book's structure. After the import you can change the level of the surrounding topics to fill any gaps and to remove the place holder topics.