Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual

Importing HTML from Word

Pasting text from another program into your Dreamweaver document works just fine, but it’s not the most elegant or efficient method for getting text onto a Web page. Not only do you lose formatting, but the resulting line breaks are a real annoyance.

WORKAROUND WORKSHOPPasting HTML

Suppose you’ve copied some HTML code, maybe out of the Source view of an actual Web page in a Web browser, or from a “How to Write HTML" Web site. You’ll notice that when you paste it into Dreamweaver, all the HTML tags appear in the document window, complete with brackets (<>) and other assorted messiness.

To avoid this mess, choose Edit→Paste HTML. This command adds the code to the HTML of your page, making visible only the text you’ll want the public to see, just the way things should be. Similarly, if you want to copy the HTML code and the visible text from your document window, use the Edit→Copy HTML command—a handy technique when you want to paste your work into another Web authoring program.

By the way, you don’t have to use these commands when copying and pasting within Dreamweaver. The regular Copy and Paste commands are smart enough to keep all of the formatting—and HTML tags—when copying and pasting within a Dreamweaver document.

A better alternative is to use Microsoft Word to save documents as Web pages, which then act as an intermediary between Word and Dreamweaver. All recent versions of Word (97, 2000, and 2002/XP for Windows; 98, 2001, and X for Mac) can save files ...