Often clients, bosses, and others will give you documents (trying to be helpful) and you will need to convert them into HTML format. There are several ways to do this, each with their own merits and drawbacks.
We will look at three different methods. You can skip to the bottom to see a YouTube video showing you all of them in action.
Saving from within Word
If you have Word Open, you can always go to:
- File,
- Choose Save As
- Set the File Type to Web Page (HTML)
- Type in a file name
- Save
While this may seem to be the simplest, it will create a large file. This is because Word will generate a ton of CSS code, to try to make the file look exactly like the Word Document. Unfortunate, it often includes a lot of information so it can be opened back up in Word, and is not needed for a typical web page.
By having a file that includes a lot of extra CSS, it can make the file 3 to 10 times a large as it needs to be for a simple 1 or 2 page document. This will make the file take longer to download, and hurt the overall bandwidth of the site.
Copy Paste Into Dreamweaver
If you have your Word document open, you can:
- Select all of the text
- Copy the selected text
- Switch to Dreamweaver
- Open a blank document
- Paste the copied text into the design window of Dreamweaver
This method keeps all of the text outline tags, like headers (h1, h2, etc), paragraphs, lists, etc. It often does not include styling for those tags. This means the file will be MUCH smaller than if you exported it from Word, it also means you may need to apply some CSS of your own to make it look correct.
In addition to the file being smaller, and this faster to download, it is advantageous because if you have a template you are using, you can insert the content into the designated spot on the template – keeping your pages looking consistent.
Import Into Dreamweaver
Finally, you an import your file. Inside Dreamweaver:
- Open a blank HTML document
- Choose File > Import
- Choose Word Document as the import type
- Navigate to the file’s folder
- Select and Import the file
This will perform the same function as the copy & paste method, but works a little better if you don’t have the Word document already open. Once again, you may need to apply your on styles to improve the look and feel for the page.
It may also make it a little more challenging to import into a template, but it may be worth the effort, especially if you don’t have easy access to MS Word.
How To Save a Word Doc as HTML was originally found on Access 2 Learn
