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Microsoft Word Formatting in WordPress- How to add a properly formatted Word Document to WordPress

Microsoft Word has invisible proprietary formatting code that dictates how your Word document is formatted.  For example, if you bold a word in your document, Microsoft Word will add an invisible code tag around the text you’re bolding to signify it’s a bolded word.  HTML works in a similar manner, however Microsoft doesn’t use valid HTML in Word or other Office products, instead it uses it’s own proprietary formatting code.  Unfortunately when try to use website page content you developed in Word and then try to copy and paste it into your new page or post in WordPress, all of the hidden proprietary Microsoft Word text formatting code is retained. This can have unintended consequences when you publish your page to your website because most web browsers don’t recogonize Microsoft formatting code; they’re designed to read HTML. Fortunately WordPress has a built in feature to recognize Microsoft text formatting code and convert it to browser friendly HTML formatting. Here’s how you do it:

After you’ve logged into the Admin area of your WordPress site and you’re ready to write a new page or post, locate the text formatting toolbar above the content editor area where you normally compose your page and post content. To make the text editor toolbar visible, make sure the “visual” tab is selected at the top of the content editor.

At the right end of the toolbar you will notice a square icon with three horizontal rows of small dots. WordPress refers to this as the “kitchen sink”. Clicking on this icon will cause a new row of editor icons to appear underneath the main formatting toolbar. Toward the center of this new toolbar row you’ll see a small icon with a yellow clipboard and the a blue Microsoft Word “W” symbol. Clicking on this icon will bring up a dialog box that prompts you to “Paste From Word”. Simply paste your content from Microsoft Word into this box and it will covert all Microsoft formatting to standard HTML formatting.

It’s usually pretty accurate, but it doesn’t always convert your Microsoft Word document formatting exactly to valid HTML, so you’ll want to double check the output in your content editor window. That’s it! You’re now ready to use the WordPress formatting toolbar to convert all your content from Microsoft Word into your WordPress website pages and posts.

About the Author

Steve Kozyk CEO/Founder ITegrity
SEO Web Development & Custom Web Site Design Company http://www.itegritygroup.com Steve Kozyk is the CEO/ Founder of ITegrity, an SEO Web Development & Custom Web Site Design Company based in San Diego California. ITegrity excels in Content Managment Systems design including WordPress and Joomla!, custom SugarCRM development, e-learning, custom web application development, health care web site development, corporate web development and small business web development.

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