Microsoft Integration Features

     

Microsoft software is ubiquitous, and Macromedia has made some attempts over the years to accommodate that fact. For example, Dreamweaver has had for a long time a command to clean up the overweight HTML that Microsoft Word generates. It has also been possible to download extensions to clean up FrontPage HTML. For the past few versions, Dreamweaver has been able to import tables built from exported Excel spreadsheets (or any other brand of spreadsheet offering basic text file export capability). However, integration with Microsoft's office productivity products has never been a huge selling point for Dreamweaver.

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That situation may be slowly changing. Dreamweaver MX 2004 brings an enhanced capability to import HTML from both Word and Excel. The big news here is that when you import such files ( assuming you do it just right!), Dreamweaver preserves CSS styles. That is, for example, if you've created some Word styles in your Word document, Dreamweaver rebuilds these styles as internal (embedded) styles when you bring the content into a Dreamweaver document. This capability can dramatically reduce your reformatting time after an import operation. (It does require that you're using Office 2000 or newer , however.)


The trick in maintaining CSS styles is to copy a selection from the Microsoft Office application and paste it into your Dreamweaver document by using the command Edit, Paste Formatted. We found that using the commands File, Import, Word Document (or File, Import, Excel Document) do not trigger the CSS import, as you might reasonably expect them to do. These File commands do, however, perform an adequate job of converting a native .doc or .xls file to HTML, which is undeniably convenient compared to the old method of saving HTML files or comma-delimited files from the Microsoft applications before bringing them into Dreamweaver. (You can still use the File, Import, Word Document command to bring in a file that was exported as HTML from Word, by the way.)

CAUTION

Also be aware that merely formatting text in color in Word or Excel is not enough to maintain that color information when copying and pasting to Dreamweaver. The color must be part of a defined style for this feature to work.




Using Macromedia Studio MX 2004
Special Edition Using Macromedia Studio MX 2004
ISBN: 0789730421
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 339

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