Question / Converting MS Word to CMS Made Simple

[battists]

Did some searching on the forums and wiki and couldn't find anything, but I don't suppose there are any mods out there (or built-in features) that allow you to convert a Word document into CMS Made Simple? I have a very large Word document, which uses numbering similar to CMS Made Simple (1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc.). Knowing full-well the joy of saving Word files as HTML (:P) or cut-and-pasting hundreds of pages, I thought it was worth a post to see if there were any decent alternatives...

Thanks!

Steve

[cyberman]

There's no such a module to do that (and like Typo3 it has).

But TinyMCE can be configured to paste word documents

http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/example_wo ... ample=true

[battists]

But TinyMCE can be configured to paste word documents

http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/example_wo ... ample=true

Eek, that may be well beyond my level.

I see that Tinymce is an HTML editor control. Does this mean that to use TinyMCE, I'd need to implement this control in my CMS Made Simple site? If so, what would happen then? Would TinyMCE become my editor for when I edit CMS Made Simple pages?

If you could back up a few levels of complexity, it would be a big help to this newbie. Your help is very much appreciated!



Steve

[cyberman]

Does this mean that to use TinyMCE, I'd need to implement this control in my CMS Made Simple site? If so, what would happen then? Would TinyMCE become my editor for when I edit CMS Made Simple pages?

TinyMCE is THE default page editor of CMSms.

And yes, you have only to implement this control to module config. Go to TinyMCE module admin, tab Toolbar. There you can insert "pasteword" (Toolbar 1).

This will includes this plugin to module ...

[battists]

And yes, you have only to implement this control to module config. Go to TinyMCE module admin, tab Toolbar. There you can insert "pasteword" (Toolbar 1).

This will includes this plugin to module ...

Sorry, another stupid follow-up. When I go to the admin page and select modules, I can see TinyMCE, but I don't have any way to edit it. (I don't see a Toolbar tab.)

I'm set up as an admin, but I was not the person who installed CMS Made Simple. Could that be why?

I suspect I'm in the wrong place.

[cyberman]

If you are on admin panel you have a menu "Extensions". On a default install TinyMCE should be installed automatically. So you should found something like TinyMCE Basic in Extension Menu.

If you go there you will found the tab I mentioned ...

[calguy1000]

cyberman, et al:
although I know this is not necessarily a support question (though it is close to it).
we should begin training users to post at least a minimum set of specifications in their post
(which version of CMS made simple they're using, hosting setup, etc, etc. before we try to help.

All too often we spend 10,20 or more messages in a thread to find out that the user is using a very old version of the product, or an old host, or something that prevents us us from providing valid help and takes time away from other people that are validly asking for help, or from the other things we should be doing. (work?).

Additionally, we're too often answering questions that are unrelated to the package. i.e: "How do I Move this DIV down below that DIV" etc.  and although this is fine for people that don't try to support CMS during their day jobs, I feel that it is 'off topic' for CMS support, and if the support team is going to reply (including myself), we should let the users know that this is 'off topic'.

From now on, lets please require users to enter their valid information, and detailed problem reports before trying to help (setup some canned replies that you can just copy and paste or something).  and try to focus on the people that know what they're doing, but are having honest problems with our product.  Not just permissions, or layout, or ftp client issues, or the thousand other issues that are inspecific to CMS Made Simple.

[cyberman]

we should begin training users to post at least a minimum set of specifications in their post

Yeah, will code a key with a link to "How To Submit a Question So You'll Actually Get Help"  .

I feel that it is 'off topic' for CMS support, and if the support team is going to reply (including myself), we should let the users know that this is 'off topic'.

The other way could be a thread splitting ...

[versatility]

battists - If I read your question correctly, I think you are asking if there is a process that will convert your structured document into a functioning website - somewhat like Robohelp will do with a formatted Word doc.

TinyMCE is going to giving you word processor style functionality on each page, but you will need to construction all the pages.  There is some support in TinyMCE to get a better copy and paste from word, but you were still looking at copy and paste I assume.

If you can clarify your question a bit further stating very specifically what you want to do, it would be helpful.

[battists]

battists - If I read your question correctly, I think you are asking if there is a process that will convert your structured document into a functioning website - somewhat like Robohelp will do with a formatted Word doc.

TinyMCE is going to giving you word processor style functionality on each page, but you will need to construction all the pages.  There is some support in TinyMCE to get a better copy and paste from word, but you were still looking at copy and paste I assume.

If you can clarify your question a bit further stating very specifically what you want to do, it would be helpful.

You've pretty much nailed it. I have a very large Word doc (+/- 500 pages) that I am converting into a CMS Made Simple site. Barring any other options, I'm looking at copy/pasting 500 pages of stuff. Since the document is divided into logical sections, I'll be building one CMS page per section (as compared to one CMS page per Word page, for example).

There are lots of hyperlinks and images that are in the Word document, which I will probably have to manually recreate one by one. With this volume of work, anything I can to do minimize the manual manipulation would be great.

So, for example, if the TinyMCE tweak will allow me to cut and paste with less of MS Word's "extra stuff" getting in there, that would probably save me a lot of time.

Apologies, too, if functionality questions like this aren't appropriate for this forum. I'll read through the posting guidelines again. We're running CMS Made Simple 1.1.2.

Steve

[versatility]

If you have a copy of Dreamweaver, it has extremely powerful Find and Replace features - I have used it to convert large documents like you are talking about to standardized xhtml.  It takes a bit of jiggering, but you can strip out not only all Word's crap code, but also remove embedded style tags, certain attributes, and be left with nice structure headers, paragraphs, and lists.  I think they have a 30 day trial...but I can't emphasize enough that you really need to dig into Find and Replace, use the source code option, figure out how to strip tags, etc.

Once you have some nice base html, it is still a page at a time undertaking to the best of my knowledge.

[battists]

If you have a copy of Dreamweaver, it has extremely powerful Find and Replace features - I have used it to convert large documents like you are talking about to standardized xhtml.  It takes a bit of jiggering, but you can strip out not only all Word's crap code, but also remove embedded style tags, certain attributes, and be left with nice structure headers, paragraphs, and lists.  I think they have a 30 day trial...but I can't emphasize enough that you really need to dig into Find and Replace, use the source code option, figure out how to strip tags, etc.

Once you have some nice base html, it is still a page at a time undertaking to the best of my knowledge.

Hmm, I don't have dreamweaver, but I do have a fairly powerful text editor (UltraEdit) that probably has some similar capabilities.

As you mentioned, it's likely to be a lots of "jiggering," but I really appreciate you giving me your feedback!

Thanks very much!

Steve

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

we should begin training users to post at least a minimum set of specifications in their post
(which version of CMS made simple they're using, hosting setup, etc, etc. before we try to help.

All too often we spend 10,20 or more messages in a thread to find out that the user is using a very old version of the product, or an old host, or something that prevents us us from providing valid help and takes time away from other people that are validly asking for help, or from the other things we should be doing. (work?).

I agree, this waste of time happens. May be there should be a sticky thread "Don't post unless you tell..." with a list : hosting, version, manual read, procedure followed, warning seen, expected result, etc.
Pierre