Pasting Microsoft Word Content into WordPress without breaking HTML

Learn how to paste MS Word docs directly in WordPress with breaking the HTML code

If you have chosen WordPress as your blogging platform and want to paste Microsoft Word documents into WordPress, there are going to be some bumps in the road to address. The first problem is that you can’t paste Microsoft Word content directly into WordPress without messing up your HTML. Furthermore, this also applies to other word processors such as, OpenOffice. While your document looked good in MS Word, it is going to look very strange as far as your text style and format. Your text may not even be shown in Internet Explorer browser correctly!

If you switch to the HTML view with the WordPress visual editor, you will most likely see the following source code.

<p style=”margin: 0in 0in 10pt;”>
<span style=”font-size: small;”>Your text here.</span>
<span style=”mso-spacerun: yes;”> More text here. </span>
<span style=”mso-spacerun: yes;”>And some more text, here. </span>

The MS office giveaway here is in the class and styles. If you would remove the class and span source code, the formatting problem will be corrected.

The main problem is that MS Word tries to preserve its format when you cut and paste the content from any document composed in Word. Recently, WordPress has incorporated its WordPress visual editor in its latest versions to address this problem. WordPress visual editor editor, has a paste Word button that allows you to cut and paste Word documents.

The first thing that you need to do is, click on the Kitchen Sink and then click on the Paste from Word button within WordPress. This process strips the excess unwanted Microsoft Word formatting away from your content, and you are good to go.

Additional comments:

Upgrading to the latest version of WordPress will give you the solution to fix the Microsoft Word issue.