Using Office Documents in a Web World

Transferring Files Between HTML and Office Document Formats

Microsoft Office 2000 offers improved support for HTML format, including the ability to save files back and forth between HTML format and standard Office document formats. You can open an HTML page in an Office 2000 application without losing the HTML coding. If you save a Microsoft Word document in HTML format and then reopen it in Word, you do not lose document properties or other Word-specific document information.

Starting with HTML files

When you open an HTML file in an Office application, the HTML code is preserved, even if Office 2000 doesn’t recognize the code. You can make changes to the file and save it again as an HTML file without losing any of your HTML information. If you save the file as a standard Office file, however, the HTML tags are not preserved.

Note   Scripting tags within the body section of an HTML file are preserved even if the file is saved in an Office document format.

Top

Starting with Office documents

Office 2000 uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) and other methods to ensure that formatting, special characters, document properties, and similar information are preserved when you save an Office file in HTML format.

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros are preserved when you save an Office file in HTML format. When you save an Office document in HTML format, any VBA macros in the document are stored in a separate file linked to the HTML file. When you open the HTML file in an Office application, the macros are available and run correctly.

Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel files saved in HTML format use scripts to make slide shows and workbooks function similarly to the way they function in the original applications.

Top

Limitations of transferring between HTML and Office document formats

Saving files back and forth between Office document formats and HTML format works in the following Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. As with any new feature, there are a few limitations.

Limitations in Word

The Version command (File menu) is only available in DOC format.

Limitations in Excel

The following limitations apply to Excel 2000 files saved in HTML format:

• Password protection must be turned off before saving a file in HTML format.
• Scenarios and custom views are available only in XLS format.
• Shared workbooks are available only in XLS format.
• Templates and add-ins can be saved only in XLS format.
• English language formulas are converted to sheet references when the file is saved in HTML format.
• Formulas that link to a cell in an HTML workbook do not work when the file is saved in HTML format (for example, =book1.htm!A1).

Limitations in PowerPoint

When you save a PowerPoint file to the Web (for example, by clicking the Publish button in Save As Web Page dialog box), select Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later (high fidelity) under Browser support if you plan to reopen the file later in PowerPoint. If you save to a lower-level browser, the file cannot be reopened as a PowerPoint presentation.

Limitations in Access

Only data access pages can be saved in HTML format. The database file itself (the MDB file) cannot be saved in HTML format.