Sanely Moving from Word to the Web?

FooAtWFU asks: "I have a job for a web site (no link for you, Slashdot hordes!). A lot of it is systems administration and development, but I have to routinely post content which comes from a myriad of other sources. Usually they are from academic users, come in Word format, and ultimately need to be posted in HTML. The problem is that Word has all sorts of tricks up its sleeve to throw off the font, layout, size, and so forth. To achieve any sort of visual consistency on the site these various formatting tags all need to be scrubbed, but even using other office suites with better HTML export (OpenOffice.Org) to do the dirty work, it's often easier to recreate the formatting by hand from a plain-text version than it is to clean up a sea of messy tags. Does anyone have any advice (or magical tools) to help me deal with this sort of tedious cleanup?"

Tedious cleanup?

[Timesprout]

Sounds like a job for Mrs FooAtWFU

One suggestion

[Da Fokka]

You might consider a pack of monkeys and typewriters. They can ultimately reproduce Shakespeare so maybe, maybe they might be ablt to properly reformat the HTML gibberish Word produces.

Of course, you could also outsource to India but that's unethical to both the monkeys and the Americon economy.

One Word...

[ScentCone]

..."Intern"

Re:hi

[Anonymous Coward]

hello. how are you?

Re:One Word...

[Cerdic]

No, no, no...

Usually they are from academic users

It sounds like this might be a university environment. The correct answer should be grad students .

Re:hi

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fine thank you

Re:One suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to find qualified monkeys - most of them already have jobs editing /. and cnn.com...

Re:no link for you, Slashdot hordes!

[Dunbal]

Which only goes to show:

      There is NO WAY the slashdot effect can be avoided. Resistance is futile...

Re:hi

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fine too.

I'm glad we have these little discussions. It makes my day so much more interesting.

Let's do lunch.

Re:Dreamweaver

[drmike0099]

The OP is correct: 1) Open Dreamweaver. 2) Commands > Clean Up Word HTML... 3) Rejoice

Elaine's

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a table at Elaine's. Can you make it?

Amen

[Quadraginta]

Jesus, tell me about it. I get 30kb attachments merely saying "Got your email, thanks!" with "thanks" done up in some odd curly red font and a six-line sig, not to mention the twenty-seven 8x10 colored glossy JPG attachments with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one...

Re:Elaine's

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure; I don't know Elaine and I'm not very handy with tools.

Re:no link for you, Slashdot hordes!

[slo_learner]

I can understand why you would hunt this information down for your own demented purient interest, but why did you have to post it?

Didn't he clearly state that he didn't want to be slashdotted? This just seems like a perfect opportunity for the application of a little common sense along with just a hint of courtesy.

Re:PDF?

[cloudmaster]

I hate you and your kind. Yes, hate. :)

Re:Resign from your executive position

[VGR]

You think that's bad?

I was given 61 screenshots (blithely dubbed "program requirements"), each its own Word document. Each containing only a (weirdly scaled) picture, of course.

61 Word documents.

Re:Sounds like you should release on sourceforge

[extrasolar]

See, if we were really elite, we would all automatically know how to do stuff like this with our favorite editor. There would be no Ask Slashdot. There's a reason why emacs is one of the most popular editors around and it's because it saves us from having to do this kind of repetative text work that should be done autonomously.

But we're not elite and I'm now going to learn how to do macros in emacs :)

Re:Resign from your executive position

[Detritus]

Because it isn't a "real memo" unless it is printed on company letterhead, formatted according to the company's style guide.

You can get anything you want....

[Quadraginta]

But that's not what I came here to tell you about.

I came to talk about the draft.

Re:Dreamweaver

[bach37]

in Dreamweaver, there's a command "Clean up MS Word HTML".

You mean the menu option that says 'Delete All'?

Re:no link for you, Slashdot hordes!

[jalefkowit]

This just seems like a perfect opportunity for the application of a little common sense along with just a hint of courtesy.

You must be new here.

Common... what?

[DragonHawk]

"... a perfect opportunity for the application of a little common sense..."

What is this "common sense" of which you speak? Where may I download it from?

Re:Actually, an NDA probably doesn't matter.

[mrchaotica]

Doubtless he couldn't post the _documents_ that he converted.

You realize he was converting them for the purpose of putting them on a website, right? ; )

Re:Resign from your executive position

[Larry Lightbulb]

You get specs? And you're complaining?