KB User's Guide - Documents Tab - MS Word to KB conversion
This document contains some strategies for converting Microsoft Word documents into KB documents.
Pasting with the TinyMCE Editor
You may now paste Microsoft Office and Google Docs content into the KB if you use the new TinyMCE editor. When you paste, you will be asked if you would like to keep or remove formatting. It is recommended that you remove formatting. Please note that this only applies to extra formatting; basic formatting, such as bolded text, will always be retained.
Copying and pasting from MS Word to the Classic KB WYSIWYG editor seldom works seamlessly. It often pulls in a lot of extra formatting, including Microsoft-proprietary tags and attributes that could keep your text from displaying correctly in all browsers.
Pasting with the Classic Editor
Rather than copying and pasting directly from an MS Word doc into the Classic KB WYSIWYG Design editor, it is recommended that you use one of the following methods to convert the text into HTML.
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Text and Code Editing Software: Copy text from MS Word to a text/ code editing software. This will remove most of the MS Word formatting. Next, copy that into KB document Editor and manually recreate the formatting. In this case no HTML is generated. We recommend Notepad ++ for Windows and Text Wrangler for Mac.
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Copy MS Word Text into an HTML Cleaner: Paste your MS Word text into an online HTML cleaner such as HTML Tidy. Then, after verifying that the formatting is correct, copy the cleaned content into the KB editor.
Please note that because this is a free tool, there may be character limits set for each paste, and it may append a link back to their site at the bottom of the document (which you can delete upon pasting into the KB). Please also consider that third-party tools such as this may capture or otherwise store your pasted content, so we do not recommend this method for sensitive (i.e. internal) content.
- Dreamweaver: Copy and paste content into Dreamweaver to get the HTML code and then paste the HTML code into KB HTML editor.
- Copy MS Word Tables: If you encounter a table in an MS Word document, we recommend that you copy the table into MS Excel and then copy that table code into Tableizer! Quick Spreadsheets-to-HTML Tool or other such tools.
Contact the kb-team@doit.wisc.edu for help with any of these methods.