The problem is both the software and the way the text is formatted.
Publisher can choke on special print formatted text when converting it to
html. Here are some things to try...
Click in the text box > Ctrl + A to select all the text. Format > Style and
Clear formatting. Now test with a webpage preview to see if the text
formatting is the same when it is converted to html.
Check the line spacing. Click in the text box > Format > Paragraph and make
sure you are using only one space between lines. Chances are if you stripped
any special Style formatting as per the first suggestion then this will be
just one space, so you might look at this before you clear the formatting.
Other formatting you can check : Format > Character spacing. Make sure it is
"normal". And Format > make sure 'Do not Autofit' is selected.
The next thing you might try is that it seems to me that I have found that
if I use an odd size font or a fraction of a font such as font size 8.5,
then Publisher chooses to produce the next 'even' or full size down when it
converts it to html. Study the number of words in each line in the Publisher
doc and then do a web page preview. Are the words wrapping at a smaller
size? In other words are you ending up with more characters on each line
than in the Publisher doc? This would suggest that when the text is either
being downsized or the kerning is changing. It appears you have the text
formatted at a font size of 9. Try formatting the font at 10, and see if the
size of the text that is produced is more consistent when you do a web page
preview. For what its worth, I would almost never use any font size smaller
than 10...it makes your text too hard to read for 'old eyes'. In fact I
prefer 12 as a default. I would much prefer to scroll down to read larger
font text then to struggle to read small font text...
You will also get different spacing results if you use a simple paragraph
return or a hard return (shift + return).
Avoid bulleted formatting...
Try a different fonts. Verdana is known to render differently in different
browsers. Try plain Arial instead of Arial Black. And of course if you are
using Book Antiqua, you are going to get inconsistent results because the
font is not web friendly.
Try one or all of the format changes as above and eventually you should find
a more consistent conversion of your text boxes, spacing and page layout
when you convert to html. Generally, look for any special formatting you are
using in that text box and strip it out. This is an example of where you are
using a Desktop Publishing program that allows you to apply all kinds of
special formatting to text for print publications, but when you try to
convert to a web publication Publisher chokes. Sometimes it is because of
the limitations of Publisher, and other times it is simply because there is
no html equivalent to the print formatting. In most cases Publisher does a
pretty good job of converting print publications to web publications, but
sometimes it comes up short...you just have to experiment with different
formatting and layout in those cases.
DavidF
