Copying from Word when blogging : Problem city

Copying and pasting from Word causes big problems in blog publishing.

Why? As Denise Wakeman explains:

Because Word has tons of hidden code behind the scenes and when you copy directly, all that code is copied into the blog tool which is essentially a web page.  If you’re using a platform such TypePad and use the WYSIWYG editor, then you’re pasting a bunch of code in to a page that will be automatically coded.  You get a real mess.

May not be a big deal for clients who know html or who are willing to cut and paste into a text editor like Notepad to get rid of unwanted code. But clients blog because it’s easy.

Jesse Newland, our IT guru at LexBlog, listened to the formatting problems caused by copying and pasting from Word or from websites for months. Drove him to develop an enhanced blog publisher for LexBlog clients that allows them to copy and paste from and websites without unwanted code. So far, so good. The number of publishing problems has dropped significantly.

Note there are other solutions. Denise mentions two she is testing, Adobe’s Contribute and Qumana’s desktop editor.

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