copying a webpage into Word 2004

[Dave Leer]

On Win XP using either IE or FireFox, I can highlight information on a
webpage, and "copy" and "paste" into Word 2003 and
it not only copies the text, but the formatting and images into the
document.

I have tried this on my mac with FireFox and Safhari, but it does not seem
to work. It only copies the text. Is there a way to get this to work?

Thanks.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Dave,

In Word 2004 use the View menu then choose Toolbars > Web. On the Web
toolbar click the Open Web Page button, then type or paste a URL to open.

Alternative, use the Save-As feature of your web browser to save the web
page as HTML. The use File > Open in word to open the web page.

These features were designed primarily to allow you to open Word
documents that were saved as web pages using Word's Save As Web Page
feature. Word will attempt to open other web pages with varying degrees
of success.

-Jim

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Jim,

I don't think that was Dave's question. He's not asking about either opening
nor saving webpages in Word. He's asking about copying a fragment from a
webpage in FireFox and Safari and pasting into Word without losing
formatting.

I have seen the same thing. I can copy from Safari and paste into TextEdit,
getting the full graphics there, but pasting into Word gets just text -
formatted text, to be sure - but no graphics. Sometimes there are things
wrong with the text formatting too. There's something different about Word's
clipboard. It omits the graphics, and there's no "Paste as Picture"
available either. If you choose Paste Special, you discover that you've been
using Paste Formatted Text (RTF) and it still omits the graphics, while
TextEdit includes them. I think TextEdit is actually using RTFD - if you
Save there, the default format is now .rtfd - Rich Text with Graphics
Format. That must be the difference - Word doesn't have an RTFD flavor to
its clipboard, while Safari and TextEdit do.

I guess you were giving workarounds, Jim? When I Open Web Page on the Web
Toolbar, I get a quite distorted view of the page I happened to be on
(including some distorted placeholders), plus it has a different graphic
since this is one of those websites that's constantly changing its graphics.
When I save the page in Safari, it saves it by default as a .webarchive file
(which I suppose must be a package) that Word can't open when set to "All
Readable Documents". When set to open "All Documents", it offers to let me
open it as a Web Archive, but then tells me that this is not a valid Web
Archive (!) and won't open it. If I go back and save the page in Safari as
"Page Source", then it does save it as an .html file but when I open it in
Word, it's almost Text Only with wrong text formatting and no graphics
except some distorted placeholders. Not a solution. BTW, TextEdit can open
the .webarchive file without problem and it reproduces perfectly. I guess
Safari and TextEdit speak the same language and Word doesn't know that one.

If I save the pasted page in TextEdit as .rtfd, then I can't open that
document in Word even set to "All Documents".

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Michel Bintener]

If I save the pasted page in TextEdit as .rtfd, then I can't open that
document in Word even set to "All Documents".

That's due to the fact that .rtfd documents are in fact no proper files, but
folders. You can right-click a .rtfd file in the Finder and see the option
"Show Package Contents". If you open this package, you'll find several
"real" files in there, one being a .rtf file which should open just fine in
Word, with all the formatting intact. Except that you won't get the
graphics. Maybe you were already aware of this, and in this case, I
apologise for making a rather useless post.
Apart from that, yes, I can confirm that Word won't paste the selected data
correctly. Apple's Pages does, however, but this is probably due to the fact
that Pages uses the same text engine as TextEdit.

Michel

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

Yes, I was trying to offer a work around. I realize that my suggestions
will not work for every web page. But it will work for some. My idea is
that Word would open the web page, get the desired formatting, and then
you could delete the parts you don't want any more or copy and paste
into the desire document. Since you would have the formatting in Word,
then it would copy and paste without loss of any formatting.

The web browser would need to be able to save the page as HTML. Some
browsers can do this, others can't. You would get an HTML document plus
a folder (if nedded) that has the pictures and other media. The "web
archive" format is something that IE for Windows can make, but IE for
Mac can not. Oddly, Mac Word can read some of them whereas Mac IE can
not. But that's not the file format I suggested in any event.

Safari 1.2.4 (the version on the computer I'm using at the moment) does
not offer a Save-As HTML feature.

-Jim

 

[matt neuburg]

Safari 1.2.4 (the version on the computer I'm using at the moment) does
not offer a Save-As HTML feature

It most certainly does.

m.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I just tried on a simple web page. Safari saved the text, but not any of
the images. I had to manually append .html to the file name. Other
browsers do a better job.

-Jim

 

[matt neuburg]

I just tried on a simple web page. Safari saved the text, but not any of
the images. I had to manually append .html to the file name. Other
browsers do a better job.

HTML doesn't involve images; it is pure text. The suffix is irrelevant.
Safari is saving the HTML perfectly; there is no "better job" possible.
Perhaps you meant that Safari (in Panther and before) doesn't have a
save-as-web-archive feature - that is true. m.