cut and paste text format prob

cut and paste from word trouble

[meanweaver]

Help! i have built a site in dreamweaver using tables to make the page fit the browser, i have pasted in a long document from word, things look ok untill about half way down, the colunm then gets narrower for a bit before coming out to the correct width again, I've been told it's because it came from word, but what i have done is copied it from word to notepad then from notepad to dramweaver, Its to long to type straight into dreamweaver so any ideas on how to rectify the problem, i must be honest and admit that i have not tried anything to sort it myself yet, I'm still new to all this and dont want to make it worse, so thought i'de seek advice here 1st.
Thanks Ian

[Web Footed Newbie]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld meanweaver!

Often with copying from Word, if you have excessive spacing or tabs for alignment, these do not transfer well. From the limited info you have given, perhaps go back to the word doc, make sure all alignment is the same, and try it again.

Any specifics as to what is not lining up would help.
Good luck, WFN :)

[limbo]

This ol'chestnut - I began my career in intranet administration and the amount of editing that had to be done between word and DW was huge.

We found the best way to import formatted word pages so you maintain tables etc was to save them as HTML in word.

You can then import HTML pages created in word and then apply the aptly named 'clean up word html' ;) command in DW to remove most of the unwanted tagging - then go to code view and find and replace the other code bloat.

If this still leaves you with anomolies try the notepad cut and paste manouvre again and check the source - it's sometimes amazing what MSword additives will make it through.

[caine]

Basically it will be Word's Mark-up language, that will be presenting the problems.

If the other chaps idea's don't solve the problem in its entirity another route is to load the text onto a blank DW page, and strip it that way, a little time consuming, but the end result, is a unformated text, in which DW can completely control, and also other scripts that you may wish to use can too (i.e. CSS, .js, etc.)

[meanweaver]

Thanks for suggestions so far,

Well tried the clean up word command, told me it chamged a few things but the problems still remains when previewed, The page is one very long text document with no tables just plain paragraphs, about 1 third of the way down the paragraphs all finish shorter than the previous paragraphs, it sorts itself out just before the bottom of the page,
I saved it as a xml page and as a web page but when i went to import it into dreamweaver it told me i needed to specify a template, dont know what that's all about still new to all this.

Anyone no what do to next.

Thanks again Ian

[meanweaver]

any more ideas what else i can try. still not sorted it

[choster]

Is it displaying properly when you preview in a browser (F12)? If so, don't worry about it. The design mode display in DW is not a perfect rendition.

If not, what does the code look like at the point where the formatting changes? Check, for instance, to make sure there are no improperly set blockquote or list tags, which Word sometimes translates from tab or margin settings.

[meanweaver]

Sorted it, Found out now why 1/3 of this huge page of text was narrower, i looked at the code of the narrower lines and for some reason word had put a <br> code at the end of every line. Have spent a while removing all these and all ok now, this was a 28 page word document so guess the guy that wrote it must have changed his margin settings or something, anyway thanks all for your help.

Regards Ian.