File updated 22/03/05 10:29

Handling outine numbered headings with htmltag:
a sample routine

These are just notes which I haven't attempted to present as fully-fledged user documentation.

In Word, the numbering generated for outline numbered styles isn't stored as "hard" numbers. This can often cause difficulties when saving a Word document to a different format. A standard workaround used by Word experts when this causes problems is to save to Word 2 format, which treats outline numbers in a different way from later versions, and permits the numbering system to be carried through into a wider range of file formats. The pre-conversion routines I have developed depend upon the Word 2 filter being properly installed in your Word setup. Before playing around with these routines, first check that you get no error messages in Word from "File | Save As" when you select Word 2 format.

The pre-conversion routine for handling outlined numbered styles was developed for a single-user solution. It's included in the Htmltag macro code. The main calling routine is called "Altminutes". This isn't called automatically from htmltag - it's an additional pre-conversion routine.

• Don't even consider playing around with this routine unless you've already familiarised yourself with htmltag, and are happy it works usefully for you.
• There's no way this sample preconversion routine is going to be useful unless you have enough VBA knowhow to customise the macro code for individual purposes. Bear this in mind when referring to the following instructions.

1. Open your minutes file in Word. Close any other Word files you have open.
2. Work through your document making sure all bulleted lists are set with stylename Bullet; and numbered lists either Numlist, or Numlist2. Note that style names are case sensitive - they must be exactly as specified here. How indents are set for lists in the Word document has no effect on the html, which picks up list formatting from the .css file.
3. From Tools | Templates and Add-ins, click the Attach button. Select the htmltag template, but DON'T CHECK update styles.
   
   Note that this is contrary to what you normally do when using just the htmltag macro. If you update styles from the htmltag template when the styles in your document use outline numbering, the outline numbering will get screwed up instantly. Undo!!
4. From Tools | Macro | Macros, select AltMinutes, and Run
5. When the AltMinutes routine is complete, activate the intermediate file "htmltag<whatever the orginal filename was>.doc" if it's not already active, and click the htmltag button on the toolbar.
6. The htmltag file will be called "htmltag<whatever the orginal filename was>.html". (When you use htmltag by itself, the original filename is used for the htmltag version without putting "htmltag" in front of the name. Things are different with ALT minutes because you're converting from an intermediate document.
7. Close the intermediate .doc file before you run htmltag again. Note that your original file is unchanged by the conversion process.