Also, .docx can bite me

September 22, 2008 6:01 PM

I need a website that will allow 20 people to quickly and easily view 30-40 short documents, without having to individually download them all.

Some clarification: I'm on the staff of my school's satirical magazine, and we're looking to reform the way we handle voting on submissions. Under the current system, people email submissions in the form of Word documents to our editor-in-chief. After submissions close, he uploads them all to an MSN Groups site, and every staff member reads them (by downloading them individually). A few days later, we have a meeting where we vote to determine which articles get in.

The problem is, it's terribly annoying to download 35ish articles in order to read them. The MSN site is also kind of confusing to navigate.

It would be fantastic if we could find a way to do this that didn't involve downloading the articles in order to read them. If we could find a site that would allow the editor-in-chief to upload Word documents in such a way that we could read them online, that would be ideal. But any solution that would let us read the articles online would be great.

posted by showbiz_liz to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Google Docs

Everyone would need a Google account, but you will not have to download anything. Since people email their submissions to the editor, he can just upload them as Google Docs, and they will be available, and editable online.
posted by clearly at 6:11 PM on September 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not sure whether this is the best solution in your case, since you just want to read the articles and not edit them, but Google Docs can open documents as web pages. Documents can be uploaded by your editor-in-chief on his account, then shared with everyone in the group.
posted by halogen at 6:11 PM on September 22, 2008

Hey, that wasn't there on preview.
posted by halogen at 6:12 PM on September 22, 2008

Does your school use Blackboard? Our school does, it is perfect for thing like this.
posted by JujuB at 6:25 PM on September 22, 2008

If you set up everyone with a Google account, and trust people to only vote once each, you could set up a Google Site, post the files via Google Docs, and then set up a gadget to run a poll. (There may be better poll options for a Google Site, that's just the first one I found.
posted by shinynewnick at 6:58 PM on September 22, 2008

Yep, once again, google is your friend.
posted by lunasol at 7:25 PM on September 22, 2008

Why don't you just use the 'save as html' option in word? Then the editor can link them all from a contents page for the month, and everybody can read them as normal web pages.
posted by jacalata at 7:52 PM on September 22, 2008

If you have a Gmail account and you receive an email containing a Word attachment, Gmail gives you the option to download it, view it, or open it as a Google doc right from the mail. If you set up a Gmail account with a well-known username and password, all your editor needs to do is forward the successful submission emails to that account. Staff members can simply log on to Gmail to do the review.
posted by flabdablet at 9:10 PM on September 22, 2008

By the way, if you're sick of having to ask people for .doc instead of .docx, Microsoft provides a converter that plugs into Office 2000/XP/2003 and allows those versions to work with Office 2007 documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
posted by flabdablet at 9:17 PM on September 22, 2008

If you're considering Blackboard for anything, use Moodle instead. You're welcome. :)
posted by Citrus at 6:38 AM on September 23, 2008

I work at Scribd.com. If you'd just like to share documents (as opposed to group editing) our site is great. Preserves formatting, too.
posted by timoni at 1:03 AM on September 24, 2008