Uploading MS Word documents to Blogger - via Google Docs

This article is about transferring material from Microsoft Word .doc documents to your Blog posts, using Google Docs to keep the formatting.

Previously in writing posts for Blogger in MS Word, I noted that if the source document is MS Word, then the only approach is to copy/paste via a text-editor.

Unless, of course you use a totally different tool like Windows Live Writer instead of Word.

But recently I had a Flash of the Blindingly Obvious (TM):   Google Docs lets you upload MS Word documents, and offers to convert them to Docs format during the upload.   Google Docs is web-friendly, and is pretty compatible with Blogger.   So it should be possible to upload a Word .doc to Docs, convert and open it in Docs and copy/paste into Blogger.

Does it work?

So far, I've tested this approach with two different documents:  a very simple document (one header and two paragraphs) and a slightly longer document with a lot of formatting (I took my own CV, took all the personal details out but kept the formatting).

You can see the results in these posts:

• Converting a simple Word file to Blogger, and
• Converting a complex Word document to Blogger using Google Docs.

The results are promising.   In each case, the pasted contents were accepted by Blogger and the post published without any further editing.    

There are some issues:

• In the complex document, the tablular layouts are followed strictly, resulting in some parts of the post that are wider than the standard column.
• I haven't tested it with a long document (more than 4 pages):  in theory there shouldn't be any problems, but I have had issues with conversion of some larger document previously.
• And I'm sure that it won't work with some of Word's advanced features that aren't (yet) supported by Docs,eg auto-generated tables.
• I'm not sure how well conversion from Word on a Mac to Google Docs works.  

I'm keen to hear about other people's experience with this approach - please leave a comment below comment below.

Detailed Instructions:

Follow these steps to transfer material from Word to Blogger via Google Docs:

1. Log in to Docs   (www.docs.googe.com)
2. Click Upload ...
3. Click Select files to upload ...
4. Select the source files from your computer
5. Made sure that "Convert documents, presentations, and spreadsheets to the corresponding Google Docs formats" is ticked 
6. Click Start Upload ...
7. When the upload is finished, choose Go Back to Google Docs
8. Open the file in Docs
9. Select the contents that you want to upload (possibly use Select All from the Docs menu)
10. Copy (you may need to use Edit / Copy from the browser, not from inside Docs)
11. Switch to the Blogger post editor, in Compose mode
12. Paste.
13. Add any other content that you want in your post.
14. Preview the post, and do any final formatting changes that are needed.

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Related Articles:

Writing posts for Blogger in MS Word.

Showing a PowerPoint Presentation as a slideshow in your blog

File sharing hosts:  places to store files used in your blog