Guide to Formatting Word Content for WordPress
Microsoft Word is the most widely used Word Processing software as WordPress is the most commonly used CMS/Website Software. WordPress is HTML aligned/compliant but unfortunately, Word isn’t. What this means is that there are a few things of which we need to be aware when creating content in Word that will be published in a WordPress Page or Post.
CSS Background
A Cascading Style Sheet defines the ‘look and feel’ of a WordPress Website (or any modern standards compliant Website). The CSS helps to separate the look and feel from the content and works closely with HTML. All we need do then is let our WordPress Website know that certain text is, for example, a heading and it will be displayed consistently the same as the other heading text on our Website.
Microsoft Word Formatting
When creating our Word document (that we’ll paste into a WordPress Page or Post) it is critical that we use styles correctly. If we use styles correctly then our headings in Word will appear as headings in WordPress, our paragraph text will appear appropriately in WordPress and so on.
The image above shows the Word Styles ribbon in Word 2007. When creating text in Word select the Style as appropriate to the content e.g.
- for text to display like this on my WordPress Website I’ve selected the ‘Normal’ Style in Word
for this text I’ve selected the ‘Heading 3′ Style in Word
and so on (remember of course that any specific styling you’ve added to Word (e.g. blue text to the ‘Heading 3′ Style’) will be replaced by the styling defined in your WordPress CSS for Heading 3 styling).
The styles available in WordPress may be viewed by logging into your Dashboard and then going to the text editor 
(i.e. go to create or edit a Page or Post).
Tables and Images
Unfortunately Images will not be Pasted from Word to your Page or Post. You’ll need to insert the image at the required location in your Page or Post once you’ve pasted your Word document. Remember too that WordPress (and HTML) allows for various meta to be attached to images that may help your Search Engine Optimization e.g. a Caption or ALT text.
Tables can generally be pasted from a Word document into the WordPress text editor however you may lose some or all of the table styling. Plugins such as WP-Table-Reloaded are excellent options for tables in WordPress.
Pasting Word Content into WordPress
Once you’ve created your content in a Word document you are ready to copy and past into a WordPress Page or Post. There is only one item to be aware of here; you must click on the ‘Paste from Word’ icon in the ‘Visual’ WordPress text editor and then paste your Word content into that (the superfluous non-standards compliant Word script is then removed which is necessary to ensure that your Page or Post displays correctly).
So now you should be able to create content in Word that displays consistently in WordPress!
