Is there anyway to display a word document as a webpage?

September 7, 2004 1:31 PM

im developing a *low key* department site for the company intranet. We've decided that ill write a simple menu that loads a word document into the facing frame for each menu item - this way i don't have to write any SQL or an interface for keeping the performance data up to date (the department employees will simply keep the word files up to date)

now the question - is there anyway to display a word document as a webpage (meaning: without the rulers and such along the sides and top)?

**important** I realize the employee could simply 'save as webpage', but that is more room for error than i am comfortable in handing them.

posted by Tryptophan-5ht to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

No. If you want to view the document in a browser, you'll need it to be in some form that a browser can use -- and MSDOC is not one of those. If you're so desperately tied to Word, you might instead want to throw your navigational functionality into some monster macro-filled Word document that will sit on a file server instead of trying to cram Word into the web.
posted by majick at 1:57 PM on September 7, 2004

I very much doubt that your dept. is running Safari under OS X.3 but I view Word docs in my browser using this plug-in.

Surely something similar available for Win/IE?
posted by i_cola at 2:01 PM on September 7, 2004

Response by poster: majick - aparently IE can read MSDOC because its loads them just fine - however it adds measurement rulers, tab setting tools etc etc to the side and top.

im not bound to word exactly, i just don't want to be stuck A) making changes to the site as the data grows out of date, or B) writting an interface to store/edit/add/change the data.

i_cola - IE can view word docs by default... it just adds controls/tool bars that id rather not have cluttering the page.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 2:17 PM on September 7, 2004

Just a thought. Could you get your web server to automatically convert the word documents to pdf format before serving them as links.
Or you could (and I don't know how you would do this), embed the word file as an activex object in the webpage. Hopefully, the activex control will allow you to switch off rulers, etc.
posted by seanyboy at 2:46 PM on September 7, 2004

aparently IE can read MSDOC because its loads them just fine

No it doesn't. It opens an instance of MS Word in your browser. Just my personal opinion, but the long-term maintenace of the system you describe will be much more painful than setting up a proper system.
posted by yerfatma at 3:53 PM on September 7, 2004

Try making a cgi that automatically runs wv against the document and presents the output from wv to the web-browser.

Specifically, you want wvHtml. Enjoy!
posted by shepd at 11:23 PM on September 7, 2004

Have them save it txt format and use blosxom?
posted by signal at 10:21 AM on September 8, 2004