Importing Bills and SIs from Word

You can import a Microsoft Word document into Lawmaker to create:

an NI Bill,
a UKSI or SSI, or
a WSI.

When you import a Word document, Lawmaker parses the document to identify the structure of the document and the different kinds of provisions. It uses things like formatting (bold/italic), styles, indentation, numbering and text phrases to identify the different components of the document. Even if it can’t recognise a provision, it will still import the content but you will need to fix the document after import.

This feature is only available at the moment to users in certain organisations.

How to import a Word document

To get the most out of this feature, follow the detailed instructions in Step-by-step guide to importing a Word document into Lawmaker. For a quick start:

Navigate to the project in Lawmaker you want to import the document into.
On the Project tab, select Document Actions > Upload from Word.
In the dialog box, select or specify the folder you want to upload the document into, along with a unique version description and browse to the Word document (.docx) you want to upload. If you are uploading to a WSI project then you can select two documents, one containing the English version and one containing the Welsh, to be imported at the same time.
Click Upload and wait for Lawmaker to upload your document(s).

The imported document will appear as a working version on the left of the screen.

Notes and limitations

This section contains notes on, and known limitations of, the import feature in relation to specific components and provisions.

Bill table of contents

If you are importing a Bill which contains a table of contents, this will not be imported in the Lawmaker document. You can, however, insert a new table of contents once the document has been successfully imported into Lawmaker. See Inserting table of contents.

Cross references and references to other enactments

References in your word document will not be recreated in the imported Lawmaker document. You will need to recreate all your references in Lawmaker. See References.

Jrefs

If you have added Jrefs to your document as text, these will be imported as text but will not be marked up as a Jref. You will need to manually create each Jref in your document if required. See Managing J-refs.

Tables

The content of a table will be imported into Lawmaker, as long as it appears in a valid location in the document e.g. within a subsection. The columns and rows (including merged cells where identified) will be preserved but the styling will use default settings—

The border style will default to the ‘all borders’ style.
The width of the table will default to 100%.
The column widths will be set to a default width based on their contents.
If the first row of a table is formatted (e.g. bold or italics) it will be treated as the header row. Otherwise, the content of the first row will be treated as normal table rows.

These default settings can be manually changed using the table properties. See Inserting and managing tables.

Quoted structures and quoted text

See Importing textual amendments (quoted text and structures) and adding codes for detailed help with importing Word documents that contain amending provisions, including how to use codes to specify the type of document being amended.

Steps and lists

Less commonly used provisions such as steps and lists (e.g. bulleted lists) are not currently recognised by Lawmaker. These will be inserted as second sentences after the provision that appears before it/them. In the example screenshot below, the list items 1-4 and the extra ‘note’ were inserted as 2nd - 6th sentences after subsection (3). They were additionally flagged in the document check right-hand panel to draw your attention to them as something that may need manual intervention.

Suggested workarounds: if you see document check error saying “Text flagged as unrecognised during Import from Word operation” then you need to decide the appropriate way of handling them in the document.

You can decide to leave them as additional sentences on the preceding provision, in which case use the Remove flag from text quick fix link in the document check card which will remove the document check flag.
You can optionally insert them as unnumbered paragraphs using the insert menu, or even insert them as list items. If you chose to manually insert them with a specific provision, the Delete unrecognised text quick fix link in the document check will help you remove the unwanted elements.

Images and Equations

These are not handled by the import feature. An image editing icon will appear in the Lawmaker document, but the image will not have been imported.

Suggested workaround: delete the image from the Word document that you are using to import from and manually insert the image into the imported Lawmaker document.

Subsection headings

These are not recognised as part of the import operation.

Suggested workaround: Delete them from the word document and manually insert them into the imported Lawmaker document.