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Clean HTML for Word 2000/2002

Clean HTML is the Microsoft Word Template that creates “Clean” HTML equivalents of the contents of Word 2000/2002 files. This template translates W3C-compliant HTML strings out of Microsoft Word 2000/2002 documents.¹ These HTML strings, created from highlighted portions or entire Word documents, can then be copied and pasted into other data applications using the Windows Clipboard—or saved to a text file. Simultaneously, Clean HTML translates a large number of typographic symbols (like curly quotes “” or the em dash —) and “extended” Latin characters into the appropriate HTML entity. Clean HTML takes advantage of the rich user interface of Microsoft Word 2000/2002 without sacrificing vendor-independent standards. Clean HTML also writes HTML 4.0 text files that can automatically link to external CSS and script files.

Clean HTML Known Issues

The following table summarizes the changes made to the Clean HTML template file and the “known issues.” Microsoft Word VBA Projects do not have versioning features by default. It follows that the summarizing table below marks updates by date:

Clean HTML Installation

Because of the awesome negative impact of “macro viruses,” Clean HTML will not deploy itself automatically after running some kind of setup program. Installation of Clean HTML must be done manually by copying Clean HTML.dot to a Word 2000/2002 Startup folder and loading it with the Templates and Add-Ins… command under the Word 2000/2002 Tools menu.² The Templates and Add-Ins… dialog shown below should summarize the installation of Clean HTML:

After Clean HTML has been properly installed, it can be run from the Tools > Macro > Macros… dialog:

Or, if you are familiar with the customizing features of Word 2000/2002, you can assign Clean HTML to a button and place this button on one of the Tool Bars. You can set up a button that looks like this:

This means that you can run Clean HTML by pressing the button or typing Alt + c.

Clean HTML Functionality

Clean HTML processes a Word 2000/2002 document with two logical loops. The first loop moves through the Collection of Paragraphs in a Word document. Within each Paragraph, the second loop moves through each Word.³ Additionally, there is a command to wrap the Clean HTML in document-level elements (including customizable meta elements) and save to an external file. Each loop looks for certain conditions to determine what to translate to HTML. Let’s call the first loop the Paragraph Loop—and the second loop the Word Loop. Let’s specify what each loop does:

Paragraph Loop

VBA.Round(.Width / 0.75, 0)

VBA.Round(.Height / 0.75, 0)

<table
    align="<left>|<center>|<right>"
    class="cleanHTMLTable"
    id="cleanHTMLTable_n_CSS_ID">

<tr
    class="cleanHTMLTableRow"
    id="cleanHTMLTableRow_n_r_CSS_ID">

<th
    align="<center>|<left>|<right>"
    class="cleanHTMLTableHeader"
    colspan="n"
    id="cleanHTMLTableHeader_n_r_c_CSS_ID"
    valign="<top>|<middle>|<bottom>">

<td
    align="<center>|<left>|<right>"
    class="cleanHTMLTableHeader"
    colspan="n"
    id="cleanHTMLTableData_n_r_c_CSS_ID"
    valign="<top>|<middle>|<bottom>">

Formatting Tables with CSS Level 2

Clean HTML table formatting depends almost entirely on CSS Level 2 and its support in “mainstream” browsers. As of the revision date of this document, the support for CSS Level 2 is satisfactory—especially for the formatting of HTML tables. This dependency allows Clean HTML the highest level of flexibility. Clean HTML assigns a unique ID to each table, each row and even each cell on the HTML page. By using ID selectors (from CSS Level 1), a Cascading style sheet can reach any table element including the table itself.

Tables translated to Clean HTML from different Word documents can still be uniquely identified by using the CSS_ID custom file property discussed below under “Translation of Word 2000/2002 File Properties into Clean HTML.”

The following style block below is one of the simplest designs for HTML tables:

<style><!--
    .cleanHTMLTable{
        border:solid 1px #000000;
        border-collapse:collapse;
    }
    .cleanHTMLTableHeader,.cleanHTMLTableData{
        border:solid 1px #000000;
    }
 //-->
</style>

Most importantly, the border-collapse property is the key to making an HTML table “look like” an HTML table rendered without Cascading Style Sheets. More advanced table formatting techniques are discussed in detail at W3.org.

Tables with Horizontally Merged Cells

The following table should translate into Clean HTML and produce the expected results:

Word Loop

HTML Entities

The Word Loop looks for “special characters” to translate into HTML entities. The following table summarizes the characters supported by Clean HTML:

Pictures

Here’s a “picture paragraph” of Clean HTML output:

Its original linking information, paragraph alignment and Alternative text settings are translated into Clean HTML. As of this writing, Hyperlink information assigned to objects other than Range objects is ignored. The next picture paragraph shows the Alternative text settings:

Saving Clean HTML to a Text File

The Clean HTML output window shows the Save button. This command saves a text file of Clean HTML adding “document-level” tags according to the following rules:

Translation of Word 2000/2002 File Properties into Clean HTML

The dialog tabs shown below show a portion of the built-in and custom file properties:

The table below summarizes the translation of these properties into Clean HTML elements:

<meta
    name="date created"
    content="5/16/2001 6:58:00 PM">
<meta
    name="date modified"
    content="1/20/2002 9:34:00 PM">

<title>Clean HTML</title>

<meta
    name="subject"
    content="W3C Compliant HTML
from Word 2000/2002">

<meta
    name="author"
    content="Bryan D. Wilhite">

<meta
    name="author"
    content="Bryan D. Wilhite">
<meta
    name="reply-to"
    content="rasx@kintespace.com">

<meta name="manager" content="None">

<meta
    name="company"
    content="Songhay System">

<meta
    name="category"
    content="Utilities">

<meta
    name="keywords"
    content="HTML, Word 2000/2002,
W3C, Clean HTML for Word 2000/2002,
Songhay System">

<meta
    name="description"
    content="These Summary attributes
should appear in the meta tags of the
HTML document.">

<base
    href="http://www.kintespace.com"
    target="_self" >

<meta name="[name]" content="[value]">

<link
    rel="stylesheet"
    type="text/css"
    href="[URI]">

<link
    rel="stylesheet"
    type="text/css"
    href="../../../root.css">

Flippant Remarks, Tips and Tricks

The idea behind Clean HTML is not to produce HTML that emulates the formatting of Office documents. That’s Microsoft’s job. Office XP subscribers may see some improvements on Microsoft’s previous attempts to produce useful HTML documents. In addition to product interoperability, we also need a clean HTML representation of the contents of Word documents to interact with systems based on vendor agnostic standards.

The elements in Clean HTML are in lowercase. However, as of this writing, Clean HTML does not produce XHTML or HTML streams to be inserted into well-formed XML documents.

As of this writing, Clean HTML does not explicitly support HTML 4.01. This W3C specification is known as a “subversion” of HTML 4.0. Many of the popular browsers (like Mozilla) reads the 4.01 DOCTYPE and cause display “problems.” These problems may actually be the browser switching off “quirks mode” and actually showing the HTML according to standards. More Clean HTML research in this area will be needed!

The specifications in this document imply that Clean HTML works best with relatively “simple” documents. A “simple” document would only have the default Word Styles (like Normal and Heading 1) plus the styles from Clean HTML. When a Word Document has a table of contents, columns, comments, text boxes, multiple versions, customized styles, form fields, etc., Clean HTML may not work properly or produce unexpected results.

Clean HTML will not produce well-formed HTML from Word Range objects containing characters with “multiple formatting.” For example, a word formatted with Bold, Italic and Underline will produce poorly formed HTML. In terms of both traditional typography and Clean HTML processing, using multiple formatting is not recommended. However, the following table summarizes some workarounds:

Future enhancements to Clean HTML should include XHTML support. As of this writing, Clean HTML has been extensively tested on Word 2000. For obvious historical reasons, Clean HTML has not been tested extensively on Word XP (or Word 2002). A digital signature for Clean HTML will be forthcoming with increased sales of Clean HTML. For Clean HTML news, registration information, bug reports, etc., please mail.

Clean HTML is for that happy few who need to separate their lengthy prose from its visual HTML presentation. Such people enjoyed writing a good essay in Microsoft Word but did not enjoy how Microsoft decided to “help” publish that essay to the Internet. Now, with Clean HTML, we can still use Word and feel little more secure that our word processing documents can move to the Internet very quickly, with links, endnotes, images and typographically correct characters—all under a standard Web-Consortium format, open to as many browsers as possible.

This document is rendered entirely via Clean HTML. Please support standards-enabling software and purchase Clean HTML today.

Endnotes

¹ Clean HTML is not compatible with any other version of Microsoft Word (past or future). Clean HTML was only tested in Microsoft Windows installations capable of running Microsoft Office.

² This manual procedure will also verify that you have enough security permissions to use Clean HTML without related errors.

³ Actually it loops through each character in each paragraph. Interestingly, there is no “Word” object in the Word VBA Object model. There is a Words Collection where each Item returns a Range Object. It turns out that the Range Object is as important to Word VBA as the Recordset Object is for Access VBA (or ADO).

⁴ “Top-level” implies that Word’s nested tables are not supported as of this writing.