Help:Converting Documents into Wiki Syntax

From UBC Wiki

The following techniques should work with any document that can be read using the program of your choice, but generally addresses the possible needs of converting DOC and RTF files. If the following plugins do not work well for you, it is recommended that you copy/paste the text and format it with the help with the wiki toolbar.

As with the HTML converter, these converters are not perfect. You will likely have to correct small errors. For example, when converting a DOC file, you may find characters that do not convert properly, but can be easily changed with the "Replace All..." function in your text editor before copy/pasting into the wiki editing box.

Open Office (Windows and Mac)

The easiest way to convert documents for use on the UBC Wiki is to use Open Office, the free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Word. Open Office documents can be saved directly in the MediaWiki format if you have installed the Sun Wiki Publisher.

Installation

  1. Download the Sun Wiki Publisher plugin for OpenOffice.
  2. Go to Tools -> Extension Manager... and click on the "Add..." button. Find the file on your computer and click on "Open". The plugin should automatically install.

Converting

  1. Open the document you wish to convert.
  2. Go to File -> Export...
  3. Under "File Type:" choose "MediaWiki (.txt)" and save.
  4. Open the .txt file and copy/paste it into the editing box of the wiki page of your choice.

Note that images are not automatically exported. Images need to be saved then uploaded to the wiki. Placeholders for them are inserted into the exported Wiki code though.

Microsoft Word (Windows Only)

After much testing, the following plugin seems to work well with DOC files (in Word 2003), but not so well with DOCX files (in Word 2007).

Installation

  1. Download the Word2MediaWikiPlus plugin.
  2. Open Word, and go to Tools... -> Options... -> Security -> Macro Security...
  3. Change "Security Level" to Medium.
  4. On the "Trusted Publishers" tab, make sure both boxes are checked.
  5. Inside the file you downloaded, open Word2MediaWikiPlus_Installer.doc and hit the "Enable Macros" button when you are prompted.
  6. Press the "Install or updated macro" button in the document. (It should automatically install the toolbar for it.)
  7. Go back to "Trusted Publishers" in Macro Security and uncheck "Trust access to Visual Basic Project".

Configuring

  • Image path: You can change this to your preference. This is where images will be saved on export.
  • URL wiki production system: http://wiki.ubc.ca

Converting

  1. Open the document you wish to convert.
  2. Click on the "Convert to Wiki" button in the toolbar.
  3. Settings
    • Article Name: This is the title that your article will have.
    • Article Category: Optional, uncheck it if you are uncertain. You may also search the wiki for possible categories, such as "Undergraduates" or "Researching".
    • Image Category: Optional. Delete any text in the second box if you are unsure of the categories.
    • Additional text for image description: Optional, but might help other people searching wiki images
    • Text Conversion: Generally you want to uncheck everything except "convert font size".
    • Target Wiki: Production System
    • Image Handling: Check "Image Extraction" if you do not already have a copy of the images as separate files.
    • Image Size: Generally, choose "use full size image"
  4. Press Convert! then copy/paste the resulting text into the wiki editing box, and save!
  5. Upload any images to the wiki. If you rename any of the images before uploading, make sure to change the names on your wiki page as well.

MediaWiki.org also maintains a list of Word macros that can be installed that can help convert a Word document into wiki markup.

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