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James Dawson's Blog (2005 - 2011)

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Word Documents and FlexWiki

We've been using FlexWiki on the last couple of projects I've worked on, as a lightweight collaboration tool providing a repository for project documentation.  In particular, processes and procedures, which really benefit from the ease of editing that Wiki's provide - enabling those following the procedure to correct/refine/expand it as they go.

I'm currently in the latter stages of a project, where I'm doing a lot of hand-over and trying to make sure that all the documentation is together.  Today involved trying to get a bunch of Technical Design documents loaded into the Wiki, where they would be more accessible - the problem was that they had originally been written as Word documents, and I didn't much fancy the prospect of a manually cut 'n pasting / reformatting session for 30 documents.

As so often is the case, Google was my friend and I came across this - a Word macro aimed at converting documents for TikiWiki.

A little bit of tweaking, a few additions and I had a macro to convert Word documents into FlexWiki-style mark-up.  On the off-chance that anyone else might find it useful the macro can be downloaded below. 

A word of warning though (no pun intended), really big documents or tables will suck the life out of your computer - and you'll also learn to hate all those people who don't know how to use numbered lists in Word, and just type them manually!

It handles conversions for the following:

  • Headings(1-3)
  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Underline
  • Strikethrough
  • Bullet lists
  • Numbered lists (no fancy styles or continuations)
  • Tables (within the limitations of FlexWiki tables)

It also escapes or changes certain characters that FlexWiki might otherwise treat as mark-up: 

  • '+' becomes '+++'
  • '[' becomes '{'
  • '] ' become '}'

***

Standard disclaimer about this macro not being warranted as 'fit for purpose' - don't blame me if your 50 page tome gets trashed as a result of running this macro.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP OF YOUR DOCUMENT BEFORE RUNNING THE MACRO - as it modifies the document in-situ and copies the result into the clipboard, ready for it to be pasted into FlexWiki.

***

If you're still interested after all that, you can download it here.

Published 14 April 2005 19:34 by james.dawson

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James Dawson's Blog said:

I've talked about why I like Wiki as a documentation medium before, however, today I had a discussion...
August 10, 2005 00:09

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