Converting a Word document to a Web Page

There are several programs and methods for converting a Word document to a Web page. You could cut-and-paste the text from the Word document into a new document in Claris Home Page. But then you would only have the text of the document; you would have to redo the formatting -- italics, bold, footnotes -- in Home Page. Sometimes, especially with longer documents or ones with footnotes, it is easier to use a program to translate the Word document, including formatting, into HTML, and then make enhancements or corrections in Home Page.

In this exercise, we will be using the program rtftohtml to convert a Word document to an HTML document and then making a few changes and additions in Claris Home Page. To use rtftohtml, we first need to save the Word document in RTF format. RTF, or Rich Text Format (sometimes called Interchange Format), is a Microsoft standard format that encodes the formatting information in a word processing document (e.g., italics, paragraph indents, etc.) with text codes so that other word processors that understand RTF can read the document and display it complete with formatting.

1. Save your Word document in RTF format

• From the File menu, choose Save As...
• We want to save the file under a different name when we save it in RTF format so we don't replace the original. It's good to use a name without spaces or punctuation in it. We will also give the file the extension .rtf; rtftohtml will recognize this extension and replace it with .html when it converts it to HTML.
• Type in the name "yourpaper.rtf".
• From the Save File as Type pop-up menu, choose "Rich Text Format".
• Click the Save button.
• Quit Word.

2. Convert the RTF version of your paper to HTML format

• You should now have a file in the Class Folder called yourpaper.rtf. Now we will go into the rtftohtml program and ask it to convert this file to HTML format.
• In the Class Folder, there should be a folder called rtftohtml-mac. Inside that folder, there is the rtftohtml2.7.5 program icon. Double-click on it. Ignore the error message about the prefs file.
• From the File menu, choose Open. Locate the file studentpaper.rtf in the Class Folder and open it.
• rtftohtml will automatically convert the file and call the output file studentpaper.html. It will also create a file called studentpaper_fn.html which will contain the footnotes. Both files will be in the Class Folder.
• Quit rtftohtml.

3. Open the HTML version of your paper with Claris Home Page

• Open Home Page, if it is not already open.
• From the File menu, choose Open.
• Locate the yourpaper.html file in the Class Folder and open it.
• Click on the Preview in Browser icon to see your document in Netscape.
• Scroll through the document to see how it looks. Also, click on one of the footnote references to see the footnotes page. Click on Netscape's Back button to go back to the main page.
• Click on the Preview in Browser icon to see your document in Netscape.