Mass import of Word documents possible?

Mike, there is an easy solution to your problem A, the fact that importing a Word document creates a new map. 

Instead of importing the document, just set up the main map and highlight the topic you want the document attached to (or just click on the central topic if you want the document attached to that).

Then switch back to Word and open the document you want to import. Select all or as much of the text you want to import and click on the Send to Mindjet. The selected material should be sent to the map with the topic hierarchy reflecting the document's headings, assuming you have used heading styles, and the non-heading paragraphs contained in topic notes under the relevant topics. You can import multiple documents into the same map.

I don't have a solution for your question B, importing more than one file at a time. However doing it manually in the way I've suggested should be fairly quick and allows you the option of selecting which topic you want each file attached to if it isn't the central topic. It also means you can check if the import worked out OK and stop if the map becomes overloaded. I'm not sure how big your Word files are but I would check the map is OK and save it after each import.

You could write a macro at the Word end but I don't know how much time it would save you over selecting the material and clicking on the Send to MindManager button.

The whole area of formatting when importing from and exporting to Word is quite complex and I'm not sure if there is any recent detailed documentation beyond the MM manual.

However the simplest thing to do is to construct your customised heading styles based on the default Word styles, as MM seems happiest with those. Generally speaking MM should match topic level to Word heading level but it will override the Word formatting with whatever default topic formatting has been applied to the map.

MM does a reasonable job of preserving Word's formatting for normal and other non-heading paragraphs which end up in the topic notes, though some adjustment will probably be needed.

Mike, I thought I'd mention one more thing to think about just in case you are contemplating "round-tripping" documents between MM and Word.

When exporting MM actually applies its own version of the default template or whatever template you apply. This means an exported document may look exactly as you would expect but if you look closely it will contain styles with names like "MM Topic 1" instead of Word's "Heading 1", etc.

Apart from the fact that you may end up with inconsistent heading numbering if you subsequently edit the document and create additional headings, you may also experience problems if you then try to export the document back to MindManager. Somewhat ironically MM's handling of its own styles can be unpredictable, especially if you have created additional headings using Word's styles.

There are two solutions:

1. Use Word's style editor to find and replace all the MM styles with their Word counterparts; or

2. Use the Olympic add-in WordX to export from MindManager in the first place. WordX uses Word's templates and styles without modifying them.