A lot of us use Microsoft Word to create documents that we would like to share with other users. However, sending a Word document as an e-mail attachment is often not the best way to go, as users can be reluctant to open e-mail attachments that might contain a virus, and sending multiple copies of a document to many users is not very efficient compared to putting one copy of the document on a website.
In contrast, putting a Word document on a website "as is" allows any Web or WebCT user who is using a browser and who has a copy of Word on their computer to view the document. Or, if you want to make the document even more widely available, you could convert it to an Adobe Acrobat PDF document, which is viewable to any Web or WebCT user who has installed the (free) Acrobat Reader.
To make the document available to the most number of users, you can convert the document to an HTML page; Microsoft's Word program lets you save a Word document as an webpage using the Save As Web Page option. However, the problem with this is that it ultimately adds a lot of extra code to the webpage, and, generally speaking, when you create a webpage using this option, there will be problems viewing the document in WebCT.
If you really need to convert a Word document to a webpage, you can save it using the Microsoft Office HTML filter, which you can download at the URL http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Msohtmf2.aspx.
So many people had problems with the Save As Web Page option that Microsoft was forced to come up with this HTML filter solution. Once you've installed the filter, open the document to be filtered in Word, then pull down the File menu and select the Export to and Compact HTML options.
Macromedia Dreamweaver has the best solution for fixing Word-generated HTML. Versions 3+ include a special 'clean up Word HTML' command that results in a much more compact and reliable webpage that works for both standard websites and WebCT course sites.
If you're an instructor who would like more information on how to use WebCT to your best advantage in your course, or have any other WebCT-related questions, please contact Multimedia Consultant Don Bell by directing electronic mail to belld2@rpi.edu.
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