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Subject:Clean up Word tags in HTML / Dreamweaver? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 29 Jul 2004 08:46:47 -0400
Christina Lamkin reports: <<I am trying to reduce the tag/dross bloat
that results from saving a doc as HTML, in Word.>>
You didn't mention which version of Word you're using, but it's worth
having a look at the Microsoft site to see whether there's an updated
HTML filter for your version. Microsoft introduced at least one
improved version to fix the worst of the export problems, but even with
the filter, Word still exports ugly HTML. Newer versions of Word may
also have a Options/Preferences setting that lets you customize how the
export works (e.g., not specifying font tags).
That being the case, on to step 2:
<<The Dreamweaver Clean Up WordHTMl function is not successfully
removing mso tags and others. (I am getting an error msg, in DW, when I
start the conversion: Word file version not determined..." -- but DW
selects the correct Word version anyway. Who knows how to either get DW
back on track or (in any editor) cleanly remove Word-only tags? The
reason is that the file is slow-to-open in a browser. --thanks.>>
There are two approaches. With small documents, I tend to copy the text
out of Word and paste it into a new document in Dreamweaver, then
manually reapply the formatting. Works fine, and not too
time-consuming.
For longer documents, use Dreamweaver's own built-in editor: Find the
first offensive tag (e.g., a FONT tag, often with a lengthy description
of the typeface etc. following the word "FONT"), then under the Edit
menu, select Replace. Copy the tag details (e.g., "FONT face=Arial
size=200" etc.) into the Find What field, and in the Replace With
field, delete anything already in that field (i.e., leave it entirely
blank). Cick the Replace All button.
Dreamweaver now helpfully highlights all cases where you've removed
only one of a pair of tags, leaving the other tag unaccompanied. Delete
those tags the same way you deleted the original tag. Continue
scrolling through the document looking for tags you no longer need, and
repeat this global replace until you're done. A bit time-consuming, but
works quite well on the whole because there's usually only a dozen or
two tags you need to eliminate, and thus, only a dozen or two search
and replace operations required.
--Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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