Talk:Word to wiki converter

Looks good. If folks can use MS Word to create pages and content, that should make things a whole lot easier. The wiki can be intimidating, but most folks are comfortable with MS Word.
 * Lady Geek: I changed the coding in the converter to match Wikimedia recommendations (which we have been following in our section formatting):

== Section headings ==

Headings organize your writing into sections. The Wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them.

=== Subsection === Using more "equals" (=) signs creates a subsection.

==== A smaller subsection ====

Don't skip levels, like from two to four equals signs.

Start with 2 equals signs not 1 because 1 creates H1 tags which should be reserved for page title. --Blbarnitz 08:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

What you see is an output of an MS Word file post-conversion.

I didn't know that you should start with 2 equals signs. Found that in the cheatsheet. Will double check that the MS Word macro follows this convention (that's where it came from). Also, to try Open Office export (Linux - Ubuntu 9.10). I'm debugging a macro that will handle tables that spans multiple columns. This version does not span columns.--LadyGeek 21:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Testing
I developed this using Office 2003. From what I could find, the VBA code has not changed since Office 2000 and is frozen at VBA 6. It should work for Office 2000 through Office 2007.

The table conversion is fairly robust. I made a number of mods to the original code, see the comments.--LadyGeek 03:23, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Macro incorporated
I incorporated the updated macro directly into the file. Centering and right justification are not supported in the code. The released example never put right justified or centered paragraphs in the demo, so the problem was not evident. The updated demo uses centered and justified text, but the code is still not there. --LadyGeek 01:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Software Development
Code updated for the latest bug fix / patches which removes the 2007 warnings. Testing with Office 2007 and Office 2003. Will make this update available for the wiki and possibly the MediaWiki community.

Subversion users checkout the trunk version from here.

Office 2007
There is an unreleased Office 2007 branch at Sourceforge SCM Repositories > word2mediawikip > word2007support.

Subversion users checkout the word2007 support branch from here.

The VBA user data forms (.frx) don't load correctly into any version of Office, including 2007. As this version is a significant rewrite of the released version, there's no sense to continue if the forms don't import. If anyone discovers differently, please me.

However, the code is useful as a check against the released version. --LadyGeek 00:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Updates
Patched:
 * nested list fix (from word2007support branch)
 * removed extra line at end of table
 * added Word 2007 as valid version
 * ignore false image scaling warning
 * don't use   tags around single apostrophes " ' "

Table Feature Fix: Text in the last column now wraps inside table instead of extending to page edge. Fix is to insert the column width on the first row. The lack of maturity of MS Word's VBA to handle merged cells makes for a complicated way to do things. The author spent a lot of effort on this. Not easy.--LadyGeek 00:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Not working: Automated upload of images. This is not necessarily bad, as you don't want to blindly upload a lot of images. For this wiki, simplicity is key.

Installation
So far, the easiest way is to simply install the macro in the document. No need to support .dot files (Office 2003 and older) or .dotm files (Office 2007). The macro might need to be hosted on a web site or emailed.

--LadyGeek 02:49, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Make a blank file, or one with simple instructions in it, then copy the article into it. Save under a new filename.
 * Open the wiki page for editing.
 * Run the macro
 * Paste the text into the wiki
 * Add at the bottom
 * Show preview, edit if necessary, Save page when done