Converting QuarkXPress to InDesign — what actually survives

There are two quite different reasons people want a QuarkXPress document in InDesign, and they deserve different plans.

Reason one: you are going to work on it. A book is being reissued, a catalogue refreshed, a title relaunched. You want a live, editable layout as close to the original as it can be, and you accept that a designer will spend time tidying it.

Reason two: you need the content back. Nobody is going to reset these pages. You want the words, the structure, and a record of how the pages looked, in formats that will still open in twenty years. That is a preservation job, and converting to InDesign may be a longer road than you need.

Decide which you are doing first, because it changes every choice below.

The routes, and the version ceiling on each

InDesign CS6 or earlier — direct, free if you own it

Adobe's own conversion documentation covers opening QuarkXPress 3.3 and 4.1x documents and templates, including the multi-language Passport 4.1x variants, with a straightforward File → Open. The importer shipped up to InDesign CS6; Creative Cloud releases do not open QuarkXPress files at all.

Two catches. Files from QuarkXPress 5 or later must be saved back down to version 4 format inside QuarkXPress before InDesign will consider them — which is circular if you do not have QuarkXPress. And CS6 is a 2012 release: it will not run on current macOS, so this route usually means an older machine or a virtual one.

A commercial conversion plug-in — the working-designer's route

There is a long-standing category of InDesign plug-ins built for exactly this, of which Markzware's Q2ID is the best known. They generally cover a wider QuarkXPress version range than InDesign ever did natively, and they work with current InDesign releases rather than needing a CS6 installation. If you are in "reason one" territory — reissuing real work — this is a sensible place to look. Check the publisher's stated version support against your actual files before buying, because the covered range changes with each release.

Via QuarkXPress itself — the long way round

If someone in the building has a current QuarkXPress licence, you can bring a legacy document up to a modern version using Quark's free converters (the standalone Document Converter on Windows for 3.x – 6.x files, or the Legacy Document Converter palette on Mac for 3.1 – 6.x), and then export from QuarkXPress in a format InDesign can take. It works. It is several steps, and each conversion is another chance for something to shift.

An IDML package — the interchange route

IDML is Adobe's documented, XML-based interchange package for InDesign. Because the structure is published rather than proprietary, a tool can build an IDML file directly and InDesign will open it — no InDesign plug-in, no QuarkXPress licence, no CS6 in the cupboard.

That is the lane QuarkXPress Rescue works in. From a QuarkXPress 3.1 – 4.1 document, read locally and read-only, it recovers the page layout geometry — text boxes, picture boxes, empty boxes and lines, with their positions and dimensions, box rotation, and the real curve points of Bézier shapes where those decode cleanly — and the authored text stories placed in those boxes, carrying the font, point size, bold/italic and colour of every run and the paragraph settings the version 4 format table records. Multi-box stories arrive as threaded text frames, so text reflows across the linked boxes. Pictures held inside the document are written out as ordinary image files and linked into their picture boxes. It writes a structurally-valid IDML package plus a styled RTF, plain text, the font and colour names and a recovery report. Every XML part of the IDML is checked for well-formedness as it is built; opening it in your own InDesign is the final check, and a very complex document may need tidying there.

Supported operating systems: Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit), and macOS 10.15 or later as one universal build for Apple silicon and Intel Macs. One purchase covers both — you get each download.

What no conversion preserves — the honest list

This part is independent of which route you take. It is worth reading before you judge a conversion as having gone wrong, because most of these are physics rather than bugs.

Text will reflow

The two applications compose text differently — different hyphenation and justification, different kerning defaults, different handling of tracking. Line breaks and therefore page breaks will not fall where they used to. Quark's own documentation warns of reflow even when converting a legacy document within QuarkXPress, so no third party can design it away. On a 400-page book, plan for repagination as work, not as a surprise.

Fonts do not travel

No conversion moves font software, and none should. A converted layout carries the names of the fonts it wants; InDesign will list them as missing unless they are installed. On 1990s work this bites hard, because the originals are very often Type 1 PostScript fonts, which current operating systems no longer support. You will be substituting — and every substitution changes the metrics, which changes the reflow again.

Linked images are links, not pictures

QuarkXPress stored a low-resolution preview in the document and referenced the real image on disk. If the picture files are missing — a different server, a decommissioned RAID, a folder nobody kept — no converter can conjure them back. Find the image folders before you convert, and keep them beside the documents.

Master pages are an approximation

The two applications model master pages differently enough that any conversion is, as long-time practitioners put it, an educated guess. Expect to rebuild masters by hand on anything structurally serious.

XTension-dependent content, trapping and colour

Anything a QuarkXPress XTension put on the page belongs to that XTension. Trapping settings, colour management setups and output specifications are application-specific and do not map cleanly. Treat all of it as needing re-specification for a modern press.

Web and interactive layouts

Quark's own documentation notes that web or interactive layouts inside a legacy document are removed during conversion, because current QuarkXPress releases no longer support those layout types. If a document had one, it goes.

The single most useful thing you can do first

Before you convert anything, get a faithful visual record of the original.

If you still have any way to open the document in QuarkXPress — a colleague, an old machine, a trial — print or export every page to PDF and keep it beside the source file. That PDF is not editable, and that is not the point. It is your reference: the only way to answer "did the conversion change this?" a month later, and often the most valuable single artefact in an old-publications archive. For readers, a PDF of the original pages is frequently worth more than a rebuilt layout.

If you cannot open the file at all, the free routes in how to open a .qxd file without QuarkXPress will often get you far enough to produce one — LibreOffice Draw will export a page it has imported.

A sane order of work

1. Establish the version of every file — it decides which routes exist. See which version made this file?
2. Gather the linked images and the font list before converting, not after.
3. Make a visual reference — PDF of the original pages, wherever you can.
4. Convert a representative sample — three or four documents from different years — and see what the tidying actually costs before you commit to the whole run.
5. Keep the original untouched, always, alongside whatever you produce. Conversion is repeatable; a lost source is not.

And if step four tells you the tidying costs more than the reissue is worth, that is a real answer too. Getting the text and the page structure out and keeping a PDF of how it looked may be everything the archive actually needs. Archiving a QuarkXPress back catalogue picks that thread up.