Word to FP - any advances?

[Terry Pinnell]

This is probably the third time I've sought help on this subject. I
had lots of useful support previously, but I'm wondering if there have
been any recent 'advances'? Despite using a variety of approaches,
frankly I've still not found a universally reliable way of
accomplishing what I want.

Today I'm trying to add another fairly long Word document to my
project. Apart from formatted text, it contains a variety of tables
and graphic diagrams, some as bitmaps, others apparently Word Drawing
objects.

Obviously, I could simply add the file and link to it on a page. But
that would
1) Require all viewers to have Word
2) Interfere with smooth reading
3) Most important, lose the broadly standard appearance I've so far
managed to sustain, as in examples such as these, also built from Word
input:
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/rachelproject-1.htm
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/s-jones2004.htm
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/ianswinglerproject.htm

The current Word doc is much longer and more complex. What approach
would more experienced FP users recommend to get it up in with similar
appearance please?

 

[MD Websunlimited]

Terry,

AFAIK, nothing has changed in that area.

 

[Tina Clarke]

The current Word doc is much longer and more complex. What approach

would more experienced FP users recommend to get it up in with similar
appearance please?

Never start writing the content in Word in the first place if you want it to
appear on a web why write it in Word? ... Just start and end with FrontPage
..... some of that stuff won't display properly anyway. If this is content
other people write then your out of luck, unless they have FrontPage of
course.

I imagine you have your own methods of conversion for the content and don't
wish me to go into that.

Tina

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[Terry Pinnell]

Never start writing the content in Word in the first place if you want it to
appear on a web why write it in Word? ... Just start and end with FrontPage
.... some of that stuff won't display properly anyway. If this is content
other people write then your out of luck, unless they have FrontPage of
course.

I imagine you have your own methods of conversion for the content and don't
wish me to go into that.

Thanks both. Looks like I'm stuffed then! Regrettably my client
insists on using only two ways to deliver input: handwriting and Word
;-(

Of all the tools, is Microsoft Office HTML Filter 2.0 most users'
preference?

I'm inclined instead to just bite the bullet and tackle the whole
thing manually. IOW, redo all the tables, edit the graphics, etc.

If so, one very specific point I never did resolve before was the
relatively simple issue of pasting text. With Word converted to text
and opened in my text editor, I copy and paste chunks at a time.
Simple, fairly quick, reliable. But the one irritating snag remaining
is that EOL characters (or Returns or Para Marks, whatever they are
called), i.e. at the end of paragraphs in my text editor, arrive in FP
as [Shift+Enter] characters, *not* the Paragraph Marks I require. Why
is that, and how is it resolved please?

 

[Ronx]

My favourite now is - no tools at all.
Open a new page in the web, and open Windows Explorer. Browse to the Word
document in explorer, and drag the document icon onto the open page in
FrontPage.
For most pages I have found very little to clean up.
However, I do not use drawing tools, so I do not know how they will fare.

--
Ron Symonds (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
Reply only to group - emails will be deleted unread.

Never start writing the content in Word in the first place if you want it
to
appear on a web why write it in Word? ... Just start and end with
FrontPage
.... some of that stuff won't display properly anyway. If this is content
other people write then your out of luck, unless they have FrontPage of
course.

I imagine you have your own methods of conversion for the content and
don't
wish me to go into that.

Thanks both. Looks like I'm stuffed then! Regrettably my client
insists on using only two ways to deliver input: handwriting and Word
;-(

Of all the tools, is Microsoft Office HTML Filter 2.0 most users'
preference?

I'm inclined instead to just bite the bullet and tackle the whole
thing manually. IOW, redo all the tables, edit the graphics, etc.

If so, one very specific point I never did resolve before was the
relatively simple issue of pasting text. With Word converted to text
and opened in my text editor, I copy and paste chunks at a time.
Simple, fairly quick, reliable. But the one irritating snag remaining
is that EOL characters (or Returns or Para Marks, whatever they are
called), i.e. at the end of paragraphs in my text editor, arrive in FP
as [Shift+Enter] characters, *not* the Paragraph Marks I require. Why
is that, and how is it resolved please?

 

[Terry Pinnell]

My favourite now is - no tools at all.
Open a new page in the web, and open Windows Explorer. Browse to the Word
document in explorer, and drag the document icon onto the open page in
FrontPage.
For most pages I have found very little to clean up.
However, I do not use drawing tools, so I do not know how they will fare.

If I was preparing the Word docs myself, that might be practical for
me too. But I'm afraid it doesn't work here. Using that method,
pasting into a properly headed but otherwise blank page, gave me this
unsatisfactory result:
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/f-may2004-withdoc.htm

Compare the result required (unfinished) at
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/f-may2004-pg1.htm
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/f-may2004-pg2.htm

and the original Word doc at
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/FMay2004.doc

Had I realised how hard it was going to be to edit manually, I would
have opted to link to the Word doc, (not as an alternative but as the
only method). But, as you may have seen, I'm now probably going to
persevere!

Any thoughts on that para mark issue please?

 

[Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage]

is there a possibility that you could just PDF the word doc?

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

Make More Money with Less Work
Let Your Clients Control Their Content With Just A Browser!
http://contentseed.com/
--

 

[Wes]

Convert it to a .PDF using CutePDF (free).

 

[Ronx]

I dragged the word document into a blank page, and the results were as I
would expect, apart from the images and drawings. Your result was exactly
the same as mine.
There is a little clean up required. I would add a few <divs>, remove all
the existing formatting, and use CSS to re-format the text. There is a
little bad HTML to tidy as well, but nowhere near as much work as I had when
using the conversion tools.
The same style sheet could be used for other documents as well.

The drawings did not appear in the HTML page at all. These I would cut and
paste into an image editor (might have to use a screen dump [alt+PrtSc] and
crop), convert to gifs, and place the gifs into the page.
The photos are easily positioned as per the document.

I won't say it is plain sailing - but the document can be converted in a
reasonable time.

It would be easier if the writers would use Word as a word processor, rather
than as an advanced text editor. Use of Headings instead of Bold text helps
a lot with the reformatting, as does "web friendly font sizes". FrontPage
will convert 9pt text to 8pt, and 11pt to either 10 or 12pt.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

is there a possibility that you could just PDF the word doc?

Could you amplify on that please Chris? A similar recommendation was
made to my similar post last year, and it turned out there were
misunderstandings about terms. What is this verb 'To PDF'? Do you mean
simply convert the Word doc to a PDF doc? And then link to that? If
so, how would that help? What advantage over linking to the Word doc
itself?

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I dragged the word document into a blank page, and the results were as I
would expect, apart from the images and drawings. Your result was exactly
the same as mine.
There is a little clean up required. I would add a few <divs>, remove all
the existing formatting, and use CSS to re-format the text. There is a
little bad HTML to tidy as well, but nowhere near as much work as I had when
using the conversion tools.
The same style sheet could be used for other documents as well.

The drawings did not appear in the HTML page at all. These I would cut and
paste into an image editor (might have to use a screen dump [alt+PrtSc] and
crop), convert to gifs, and place the gifs into the page.
The photos are easily positioned as per the document.

I won't say it is plain sailing - but the document can be converted in a
reasonable time.

It would be easier if the writers would use Word as a word processor, rather
than as an advanced text editor. Use of Headings instead of Bold text helps
a lot with the reformatting, as does "web friendly font sizes". FrontPage
will convert 9pt text to 8pt, and 11pt to either 10 or 12pt.

Thanks for that very informative follow-up Ron.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Convert it to a .PDF using CutePDF (free).

Thanks, but why? See my reply to Chris.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

If you link to a PDF, then all formatting is retained and document would look the same as if the
user was using Word, however if you have the full version Adobe Acrobat, then you can also apply
permissions, etc.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, WebCircle, MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Wes]

For one thing, your users will not require Word on their systems.
PDFs are smaller, requiring less space and download time.
Cute PDF can convert a document in seconds, saving you the time and effort
removing all the unwanted stuff in the doc.
Adobe Reader is FREE, Word is not.
PDF is practically a defacto standard for large documents on the web.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

For one thing, your users will not require Word on their systems.
PDFs are smaller, requiring less space and download time.
Cute PDF can convert a document in seconds, saving you the time and effort
removing all the unwanted stuff in the doc.
Adobe Reader is FREE, Word is not.
PDF is practically a defacto standard for large documents on the web.

OK, thanks both, I'll take a closer look at that approach.

 

[Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage]

yes, that's what I meant. convert the word doc to a PDF, the advantages are
significant; the user won't need word on their system to read it, it's easy
to email i.e. email to a friend etc.
Acrobat 6 has some nice features such as triggering the PDF to open full
screen, allow scripting etc.


--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

Make More Money with Less Work
Let Your Clients Control Their Content With Just A Browser!
http://contentseed.com/
--

 

[Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage]

send me the word doc and I'll run it through acrobat 6 for you.

I've been fooling around with it quite a bit. I'm working on a way to do a
power point like presentation using acrobat 6's other features.

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

Make More Money with Less Work
Let Your Clients Control Their Content With Just A Browser!
http://contentseed.com/
--

 

[Terry Pinnell]

send me the word doc and I'll run it through acrobat 6 for you.

I've been fooling around with it quite a bit. I'm working on a way to do a
power point like presentation using acrobat 6's other features.

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

Make More Money with Less Work
Let Your Clients Control Their Content With Just A Browser!
http://contentseed.com/

Thanks for the offer Chris. It's at the link I gave earlier:
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/FMay2004.doc

But I decided to try the suggestion you and Wes made, so made a PDF
using PDF95. Please let me know if this is what you meant. See bottom
of this page:
http://www.cupod-mentoring.com/f-may2004-pg1.htm

As you say, that should be accessible by more users than if I'd linked
to the original Word document.

The only disadvantage I can see is that I lose the background canvas
and colour theme I've used for other pages.

 

[Wes]

Terry,
I don't use Adobe much, but I do know that you can change text colors, add
background, etc. So you may be able to accomplish this using that program.
Although I doubt if the user will care about the background while reading 23
pages.

 

[Terry Pinnell]

Terry,
I don't use Adobe much, but I do know that you can change text colors, add
background, etc. So you may be able to accomplish this using that program.
Although I doubt if the user will care about the background while reading 23
pages.

Good point!

Before trying this PDF approach, I put in about 6 hours converting
about a third of the Word document manually. The prospect of the
remaining two thirds didn't enthuse me. So - I'm now a PDF enthusiast!
Thanks to you, Chris and Thomas for the recommendation.

I could even get to like a white background <g>.