Converting Word Documents to Web Pages

If you have information in a Word document that you want to let a large number of people read, you can convert the document to a Web page and then post the page on a Web site, either on the Internet or on your company intranet. Before you convert your document, however, check with your network administrator to see whether it's necessary. In some casesdepending on the browser your company uses and the software used to run the Web serveryou can put Word documents on company intranets without changing the document format at all.

Follow these steps to save a Word document as a Web page:

1. Open the Word document that you want to convert or create a new document now (see Figure 23.1).

   Figure 23.1. Open the document that you want to convert to a Web page.

   

2. Choose File, Save As Web Page to display the Save As dialog box.

3. If you like, you can click the Change Title button to revise the title that will appear in the title bar for the page. A descriptive title will help search engines to catalog your page and help readers get a sense of what the page contains. Then specify a name and location for the page (see Figure 23.2), and click the Save button.

   Figure 23.2. Choose a name and location for your Web page.

   

4. You may see a message such as the one shown in Figure 23.3 stating how Word will modify formatting that can't be rendered in a Web page. If you do, click the Continue button.

   Figure 23.3. Word tells you if it can't convert all the formatting in the Word document.

   

5. The newly converted Web page appears in the Word window (see Figure 23.4). Word automatically switches to Web Layout view (View, Web Layout) whenever it displays a Web page. If you want to see what the page will look like when viewed in a browser, choose File, Web Page Preview .

   Figure 23.4. Word displays your Web page in Web Layout view.

   

6. Your browser opens and displays the Web page. In Figure 23.5, the Web page is displayed in Internet Explorer. Close your browser when you're finished viewing the page.

   Figure 23.5. You can view your Web page in your browser to see how it will look to others.

   

By default, Word saves Web pages in a format it calls Single File Web Page (see the Save As Type drop-down list in the Save As dialog box shown in Figure 23.2). These files have an extension of .mht (for MHTML). The MHTML format is convenient because it saves all of the components of a Web pagetext, images, other graphical elements, and so onin one file. However, it is not supported by all browsers. For this reason, it is only a good choice if you're planning on posting your page on a company intranet where everyone uses the same browser. If you are going to post your page on the Internet, you should choose Web Page in the Save As Type list instead. This option saves the files in the standard HTML format, which can be read by all browsers. Keep in mind, however, that if you save the file in HTML, you will need to upload any images or other components of your Web page to your server separately, and these components will need to be stored in the locations referenced in your Web page. If this raises more questions than it answers, ask your system administrator or a Web-savvy friend for help.