Importing Word Documents - Versions Before RoboHelp X5

Here's how I imported Word documents into RoboHelp before Version X5 was introduceed so that the HTML was as clean as I could get it.

I first saved the doc file (or a copy of it) and stripped out all the bookmarks using one of my Word macros, otherwise you got some horrible looking stuff in the WYSIWY editor (text with a grey background). The macro really does strip out ALL the bookmarks including ones you may not have realised were there! You may prefer to retain the bookmarks and live with the grey background. That's your choice and it will do no harm.

Then I saved the document as an HTML file and opened it in HTML Kit. Depending on your version of Word, there may be an option to save a Word document as a Filtered HTML file. That is not the same output as these steps and will still give some problems.

The steps are:

1. Run the clean up tool and you will find 75% of the lines have gone. Don't worry, that's what this exercise is about.
2. Now right click and transfer that code into a new window.
3. Close the original and then save the new window over the top of what you just closed.
4. Next import it into RH. It will not be perfect but it will be better than most other methods. Bullets will be just a full stop (period) at the beginning of the line. Tables will also need cleaning up.