Q: We want to put a few company reports on the Web instead of mailing them to remote employees and contractors. They're mostly text, with some graphics, charts, and tables. All are created in Microsoft Office. Will Office 97, particularly Word 97, handle the task, or should we invest in FrontPage 97?

A: The Web document features built into Office 97, particularly Word 97, should be sufficient. If you're only putting a dozen or so documents online without extensive hyperlinks between them, you won't need the extra site management and other specialized Web tools that FrontPage offers. And Word 97's Web page layout features will suffice for pages that needn't--in fact, shouldn't--be overly fancy. There are too many ins and outs to cover in one column, but I'll start with converting your text and deal with graphics and tables in future columns.

Let's suppose you have several reports in Word 97 that you want to post on your company Web site or intranet. How do you proceed?

* First, convert your document to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), the document format used on the World Wide Web. HTML is a collection of formatting codes called tags, which a Web browser uses to display text and graphics and present hyperlinks, tables, and other functions. Simply click File*Save as HTML and supply a name.

Word 97 can convert documents to HTML and turn your Table of Contents entries into Web links. Word ties the links to asterisks, but you can easily make an entire TOC entry a link.

* The HTML version now appears onscreen. Click View*On-line Layout to see how the document will more or less appear in a Web browser. Click File*Web Page Preview to view the document in your default browser.

Don't be surprised if a lot of your fancy formatting is gone. HTML's meager feature set can't match all the stuff Word does. Kiss the following Word formatting good-bye: comments, precise font sizes, text columns, footnotes and endnotes, headers and footers, page numbering, drop caps, fancy font styles like emboss and shadow, page and paragraph borders, animated text, highlighting, revision marks, and a bunch of other stuff.

But don't worry. A Web page, especially for a straightforward report, should be simple so it displays promptly and prints easily. And if a report is more than 10 pages long, you may want to break it into smaller HTML files, which readers can access by clicking a "Next page" link. (I'll discuss how in a future column.)

LINK THAT DOC!

You can make a long report easier to navigate, however, by backtracking to the original Word document and generating a table of contents, which will let the reader jump to any section shown in the TOC with a click. Here's how.

* Start with the Word document file, not the HTML version. It helps if you've organized the report under main headings and sub headings. Assign Word styles to each (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.). These can easily serve as TOC headings using Word's automatic TOC insertion feature.

* To insert a TOC, place the text cursor near the top of the document, click Insert*Index and Tables, and click the Table of Contents tab. Choose a TOC format from the Format list. I stick with the simplest ones, Classic or Simple, since I usually reformat their fonts and indents anyway. Check the Show page numbers box and uncheck Right align page numbers. In the Show levels box, select the number of header levels for the TOC.

Pick one or two levels to avoid a TOC that's too long and complicated. Note: If you've used headings other than Word's Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., click the Options button and enter the TOC level for the heading styles you've created. Click OK and a table of contents will pop into your report.

* You'll see that Word has gathered up the specified subheads in your document with corresponding page numbers and turned them into TOC headings. Notice that the text cursor changes into the hyperlink hand cursor when it hovers over the page number. Click the page number and Word zooms you straight to that page in the text.

Fortunately, Word's HTML conversion feature preserves these TOC hyperlinks, replacing each page number with an asterisk.

But it would be cooler if you could click the entire subhead instead of just the asterisk. One way is to highlight the asterisk and retype the TOC entry, erasing the original. But it's quicker and fairly simple to just change the document's HTML code.

* After backing up the HTML document, click View*HTML Source and you can edit the actual HTML code. You'll find the TOC entries near the top, looking something like this:

<FONT FACE="Arial"><P>
Survey Results</FONT><A HREF= "#_Toc388329401">*</A></P>

Do you see the asterisk? It's next to the </A> tag, which anchors the hyperlink reference. Highlight "Survey Results </FONT>," cut it, highlight the asterisk, and paste. The revised code should look like this:

<FONT FACE="Arial"><P><A HREF="#_Toc388329401">Survey Results</FONT></A></P>

You can quickly repeat these steps with the other TOC entries.

Once you've made all the changes, click the Exit HTML Source button and save the file. Now all the TOC entries should be clickable hyperlinks. Cool, no?

© 1997 Bob Weibel. All rights reserved.