Converting MS Word to Dreamweaver -- very messy!

[chuckdesign]

I've been converting Word documents to Dreamweaver for years by saving the doc as HTML, then importing it into Dreamweaver, cleaning it up, and applying my styles, etc. It's been a bit cumbersome, but overall not bad.

This year I upgraded to Dreamweaver MX and MS Word X for Macintosh OS X. What a disaster! The Word files now come in with unnecessary style sheets and other coding that Dreamweaver does not know what to do with. "Clean up HTML" and "Clean up Word HTML" do not catch the majority of coding. Also, special characters like apostrophes, quotes, and dashes turn into weird symbols that do not get converted. I spent three times as much time cleaning up my documents line-by-line, and I often miss some of the errors.

Can anybody offer any advice? This has become unworkable.

Thanks!


-- Chuckdesign

 

[ConstantSTATEofFLUX]

would it be too much to ask if you let dw build your pages?

[tt]^{Nothing in life} _{is to be feared.} ^{It is only to be understood}

 

[chuckdesign]

Could you clarify? These are client documents, white papers, newsletters, etc. that start out in Word that need to somehow get converted to Web format.

I've tried cutting and pasting from Word to Dreamweaver, but it condenses everything into one long paragraph separated by <BR>'s.




-- Chuckdesign

 

[WizyWyg]

Download a program called NoteTab Light (or pro if you want)
Save your Word Documents as Text files.
Open them up in NoteTabe Light
Under Modify there are several choices:

Document to HTML > with paragraph tags or without

Its easy, not as cumbersome, and no messy code.
Then open up in Dreamweaver to add styles.

IT will also convert word documents, but I never convert from word.

 

[WizyWyg]

http://www.notetab.com/ntl.htm

Is the url to download the light version. They do have a pro version but I found the light to be useful enough.

Give it a try.

 

[lebisol]

there is also something from MM called &quot;Contribute&quot; or something like that...it should solve your problem


and here it is:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/

 

[chuckdesign]

Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated.

Unfortunately, the website says NoteTab is only for Windows. I'm on a Mac.


-- Chuckdesign

 

[TonyU]

[tt]What's the purpose of you converting these white paper, newsletters etc... in to a web format?

are users interacting with them or simply viewing them?

If user will only be viewing/reading them, I would suggest converting them into PDF's and storing them on the server with links to them....

Delete * from brain Where MaxLevel = &quot;Full&quot; and reaction = &quot;Slow&quot; order by StartOver
​

 

[chuckdesign]

Thanks, Tony. Already considered that option, and in fact some of the documents are stored in PDF format. But much of the info needs to be searchable, or needs to be presented in the body of the page for other political reasons, thus my HTML conversion nightmare.

Macromedia Contribute is available only for Windows; I'm on a Mac.

-- Chuckdesign

 

[WizyWyg]

Is there a windows machine you can use just for this purpose?

Save your file in word on a windows machine, use notetab (or something) on that machine, and then retrieve those files over you network to open in your DW application on your Mac?

Someone/somwhere in your office has/have to have a windows machine ^_^?

 

[lebisol]

here is another link that might lead to what u need:

http://download.com.com/3150-2058-0.html

 

[lebisol]

nm the previous post....didn't see that this is Mac specific

 

[DaRNCaT]

The best way is probably to use the find and replace function in DW- at least that way you won't miss anything, the process will still be long winded, but better than doing it by hand.

Sometimes, when my code just won't behave, I take it outside and make it listen to britney spears music, and when it comes back it's really well behaved. I wonder if it's suffering from post tramatic stress syndrome now..