Skip to main content

Please Don't Use Microsoft Word To Compose Posts

Here's a sample of a Word document, copied directly into Post Editor.

Now is the time

For all good men

To come to the aid

Of their country.

The quick brown fox

Jumped over

The lazy dog.

The fountain pen

Of my aunt

Is filled with whiskey.



And this is what we now have. How can you edit this, when you need to? Auuugh.


Content composed in Microsoft Word, with lots of "<div> ... </div>", a "<div>" tags, may be a cause of problems with the New Post Editor 2008, and the "Read More" feature.


<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Now is the time</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">For all good men</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">To come to the aid</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">Of their country.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><i style="">The quick brown fox<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><i style="">Jumped over<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><i style="">The lazy dog.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><u>The fountain pen<o:p></o:p></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><u>Of my aunt<o:p></o:p></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><u>Is filled with whiskey.<o:p></o:p></u></p>

The meta code (as shown above) generated by Microsoft Word will cause invisibly large posts - and problems with both auto pagination, and with various newsfeed related accessories.

Please, don't do that. This is simpler, believe me.
  1. Edit your post, in Compose mode.
  2. Select the entire post.
  3. Hit the "Remove formatting" button, in the toolbar.
  4. Reformat everything, as desired.
  5. Finally, Save the reformatted post.
To make it simpler, do a "Paste as plain text" (In Chrome, that's Ctrl+Shift+V.).

Of course, simpler still would be not using Word in the first place. But you can't always tell your friends what to do.

It's also possible that copying the Word content, directly into Post Editor, in Edit HTML mode, will strip away all gratuitous metaformatting. If you do this, though, be careful about "<" and ">" characters. Alternately, you may be able to correct this after the fact.

Comments

Nitecruzr said…
James,

It's easier to do than to explain.

You copy the content into Notepad, which strips out all of the formatting, leaving just text and some (not all) line breaks.

You recreate the needed line breaks in Notepad, then copy the entire contents into post editor compose.

You check the line and paragraph breaks. Then you add bold, italics, quotes, lists, and other content elements. It's a tedious process, but a lot more reliable than cleaning up artifacts from Microsoft Word.
Alice said…
unfortuantely this doesnt help me at all, as a mac user i dont have Notepad. is there another way to do this for mac users? because i really want to post. thanks for any help that anyone at all can give me.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Kaia,

I'm updating my post to reflect the ideas discussed in the Google Blogger Help: How Do I? thread.

The idea of copying directly from Word into Post Editor, in Edit HTML mode, sounds promising. Just be very careful, if the document has "<" and / or ">" characters!
Moms Hugs (Eve) said…
Great! Can copy from MSWord in 2 ways without 2nd step using Notepad... yea!

1. copy into HTML directly then use Compose to format, or

2. copy into Compose, then select all, use Eraser to remove formatting & then format using Post options.

Ck in Preview. I didn't need to put linebreaks back in, but can't say that's true for you.

If the "undo/redo" option, I could compose directly in Post!

Thank you for helping!
Saved me a LOT of TIME!!!
Anna L. Walls said…
I've copied and pasted before without a problem but now that I know this I'll be more careful.
Jonny Brush said…
Thank you so much for the help. This has sorted several problems I have been sweating blood over for months and it was an instant fix. You are now a very important bookmark! Thanks.
Amy said…
Hello, do you have to go back and take out all the editing from Word? Or if I go forward and do this, will they show back up?
Nitecruzr said…
Amy,

As you publish properly formatted posts, the new posts will show up on the main page together.

The posts which contain MSWord formatting will show up separately, under "Older Posts", until you edit and clean them.
Bob and Jo said…
How do I know which postings may have the MSWord inputted stuff? I normally use blogger but maybe once or twice used MSWord and now cannot remember.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Bob and Jo,

Thanks for the question, that's a good one!

I can think of several techniques - starting from the symptoms.

Using MSWord results in posts that are larger than they appear. If you're not using Jump Break, you can look for a main page that contains less posts than should be normally visible. Then look at page source - using a text browser or viewing page source - and look for "MSO" and similar tags.

On an individual post basis, again look at page source, for posts that are larger than they look in normal view.

I'm looking at "How to Love Where You Are ..." - and I'm not seeing any main page segments with obvious MSO effects - and I looked at 5 segments ("Older Posts"), one by one.

If you're not seeing any problems reported, I'd just concentrate on publishing more posts - and not worry. If you have a problem reported, then look for MSWord artifacts.
The Brewster said…
Many of my originals are also in WORD. Now I cut / paste them into GOOGLE DOC online. It is free, Then I select it all and remove formatting (upper right). That helps a lot but sometimes I have trouble with numbered lists. Finally I cut / paste it back into my unpublished BLOGGER post. I will try the CTRL - SHIFT - V like Chuck suggested as well

Popular posts from this blog

Adding A Link To Your Blog Post

Occasionally, you see a very odd, cryptic complaint I just added a link in my blog, but the link vanished! No, it wasn't your imagination.

Embedded Comments And Main Page View

The option to display comments, embedded below the post, was made a blog option relatively recently. This was a long requested feature - and many bloggers added it to their blogs, as soon as the option was presented to us. Some blog owners like this feature so much, that they request it to be visible when the blog is opened, in main page view. I would like all comments, and the comment form, to be shown underneath the relevant post, automatically, for everyone to read without clicking on the number of comments link. And this is not how embedded comments work.

What's The URL Of My Blog?

We see the plea for help, periodically I need the URL of my blog, so I can give it to my friends. Help! Who's buried in Grant's Tomb, after all? No Chuck, be polite. OK, OK. The title of this blog is "The Real Blogger Status", and the title of this post is "What's The URL Of My Blog?".