Re: Word to HTML Conversion summary

[Fran Madera <Fran_Madera -at- WILLBROS -dot- COM>]

Thanks for all the info.  Here is the summary in case there is interest is something technical in the mail today.

Question:
I am saving word docs to HTML. The word file contains graphics that are named so I know what they are such as NavMenu.gif.

When I save to HTML the graphics are renamed in the code to image43, image 44, image45, etc.  

In the HTML source code, I relinked the graphics using the file name I gave the graphic but Word won't retain the names. 

Is there a way to force Word to save the graphics using the same name I gave them?

I have an HTML editor I can use but wanted to take advantage of the easy of the Word save as HTML feature.

Any ideas? 

Answers:
Katav :
Preface: I use Word, with HTML "tags" (e.g. H1 in lieu of Heading 1) to create HTML text since I depend upon the spell check.  Word has, alas, a lousy HTML filter, but I handcode HTML so it is (relatively) easy for me to "correct" Word's choices.

There's a better alternative if you know HTML code. 

Once HTMLed, the file NEVER goes back to Word as HTML. If I want/need to end the file, I rename it to *.txt and import it into Word (with all the nasty HTML code) where I edit to my little heart's desire. Since it is NOT a Word file - make certain to SAVE AS PLAIN TEXT - Word does not attempt to "rename" anything -- including <IMG SRC="">.  This is not a "been there/done that" sort of thing ... this is "am here/doing this" - real life for me.

'Nuther thing: plan to create your own META tags; Word's are useless except to promote Word and Microsoft. There are many FREE META tag builders on the  WWW.

Still 'nuther thing: consider Cascading Style Sheets; create ONE and LINK to it -- gives you great formatting abilities, BUT I have to bring the HTML>TXT file back into Word for global REPLACE functions to change the Word generated text string for the CSS tag I want.

BTW, I love Word as a quick graphics converter -- dump in a BMP and get back a GIF. Wow!


Linda Sherman:
My advice is, don't use Word to create HTML. Of all the many, many HTML tools on the market, many of which are cheap or even free, Word is utterly the worst, and you've discovered some of the reasons why.

You can find a whole slew of decent, low-priced, shareware HTML editors, both text and WYSIWYG, as well as demo versions of commercial products,
at

   http://www.tucows.com
   http://www.builder.com
   http://www.zdnet.com

Also, search Yahoo for "HTML Editors" to find other sites.

Mary McWilliams Johnson:
I agree with you that letting Word convert your docs to HTML is a quick, easy way to get the conversion started. However, I think you should only use Word for the first step in the process. After that, just close Word and load your HTML doc into your HTML editor, replace the image1, etc., graphic names with the real names.

I'm not sure, but the problem you're having with the graphic names may stem from the fact that Word converts them to GIF files. Or rather, it REPLACES each graphic with a GIF version of it. These are not the same files that you started with, which were very likely TIFF, PCX, or some other format. 

Once you're dealing with these graphics in your editor, you can rename the image1.gif file to its original name, keeping the .gif extension. Just be sure that the actual file name and the img reference are identical.

Another thing you might want to remember is that, although Word does you a favor by converting your graphics to GIF--and usually does a very good job of it--there will be times when you won't like the way the converted graphics look; that's when you will want to pull those graphics into your favorite graphics program (Photoshop, PaintShop Pro, etc.) and do the conversion yourself. For instance, photos with a lot of detail or graphics with gradients don't usually make good GIFs and probably should be converted to JPEG.


Fran Madera
e-mail:  fran_madera -at- willbros -dot- com
telephone:  918-748-7483
              
We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give.

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