Building a Web Page with Microsoft Word 97

While Microsoft Word was not designed as a Web page editor, it has a lot of features that allow you to design your Web pages quickly and easily.

There are a couple of ways you can create a Web page in Word:

• Use the Web page Wizard
• Convert an existing Document

Word makes a couple changes to the way it displays your pages when it is in Web page editing mode.

• The ruler is removed
  the width of Web pages is dependent upon the browser that is displaying them. If the ruler were still visible, it would leave you with a false sense that your page would be seen at the same width every time. However, if you still want to see the ruler, you can. At the top of the page, there is a gray line directly before your page starts. If you put your mouse on it, the ruler will drop down.

• The screen refreshes more often
  you may notice that the screen seems to flicker and redraw more often in Web editing mode.

• The page margin is closer to the edge
  this is also a factor of HTML. It is very difficult to define the margins reliably in HTML, and Word is striving to be a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get). The narrow left margin is probably what most people would see when the page is live.

• The menus have changed
  when you switch to Web editing mode, you get more menu options to do things like create a Web form, add background sound, hyperlink your text, and so on.

• Finally, if you are not happy with the way the page looks, you have the option (in the View menu) to edit the HTML source directly.

Use the Web Page Wizard

The Web page wizard is available if you know that you are going to want to create a Web page. It gives you the choice of several Web styles as well as backgrounds, layouts, and images on your page. The instructions are easy to follow.

1. Choose a format
   this is what your page will "be", in a sense. You have a choice of columnar layouts, forms, a simple homepage, and a Table of Contents.

2. Choose a style
   this defines what your page will look like. It includes items like the background image and images within the page.

3. Start writing your page.

The wizard comes with instructions within the text of the page to help you do things like add links and images or even multimedia.

The page will be automatically saved as a .htm file so that you can upload it to your Web site.

Convert an Existing Document

If you have an existing Word document, you can use Word 97 to convert it to a Web page. You should note that the Web page will not look exactly like the Word document. Word documents are for print and HTML documents are for the Web, and are inherently different media.

1. Open your Word document as you normally would.

2. When you are finished editing it, save it in document format (so that you do not lose any formatting styles, etc.)
   HTML does not include all of the formats that are available in Word, and while Word will do its best to convert them, some may not show up correctly.

3. Go to the File menu and choose "Save as HTML".
   You will be prompted with the save dialog box. Make sure that the file name has the extension .htm or .html. When you go to save, Word should inform you that some formatting styles may be lost when you convert to HTML.

4. The document will then display in the Word HTML editing screen.

5. Review the document.
   Word may do things like convert numbered lists to all one number, or change the layout, and you should check your page to make sure that it looks okay before you exit.

6. Save your page and upload it to the Web.