Reformat MS Word DOC
Some of the ebook conversion articles I made in the past mentioned editing a MS Word DOC file before proceeding to another conversion. In this case, MS Word will serve as the “bridge” for another conversion. The reason is because most ebook converters can convert a DOC file directly. I use MS Word as the “bridge file” in converting repligo to other ebook formats. I also use this procedure to convert PDF to LIT, without purchasing commercial ebook converters.
The image shown below is a copied text from a PDF file pasted to MS Word blank document. Most often than not, you will have the same result. Of course we cannot convert it at this point and needs to reformat.
Choppy lines is obvious breaking the lines in unexpected places, this is because the original file had encoding (if its from html before PDF), paragraph and/or line breaks. That’s why it doesn’t come out looking exactly as the copied file.
The show/hide button of MS Word is a great tool to see the markings of breaks, it is located on your toolbar. When this button is clicked, you will see the symbol to every line breaks. It is easier to see exactly where you need to edit.
Manual removing of line breaks needs a lot of patience and time especially if you’ll be editing a big ebook file size. That would mean go to the symbol and delete… a repetitive process.
The easier way is to click edit from your toolbar, then choose replace. A pop-up window will show.
Find what: ^p or click special and choose paragraph mark
Replace with: ^s or click special and choose nonbreaking space
Then click Find Next button, when target line reach, click Replace button. Continue doing this until you reach the end of the document.
For other desired formatting depends on your file, choose and click from the special button in the Find and Replace window. If you plan to convert the DOC file to PRC afterwards, you might find Prepare MS Word DOC useful.
Prepare MS Word DOC For Mobipocket Conversion
From the sound of the title, it should be simple and easy but based on my experience, preparing the source file eats time more than the converting process itself. Ever wonder why most of the ebook conversion company charges a big sum of money for their services? This could be one of the reason. It took me 2-6 hours on correcting source files to have a perfect output.
Let’s make MS Word DOC as an example. From the MS Word software, our eyes could deceive us. We could also believe that everything is perfect already because we already saw how would it look when printed. For all we know, there are wrong tags like header, footer, index on a paragraph. Errors like these will make the words become noticeable because of their font size and style (bold or larger fonts).
Sometimes, ebook conversion on other format could be as easy as 1-2-3, we could convert the same file and have the same output we see on MS Word print preview. Its different on converting to mobipocket PRC format, every formatting such as font style, size, alignment, index, header, footer, page breaks, line breaks, among others will be reflected. Converting to a mobipocket format should be done with a perfect source file, one needs a keen eye on details and with a lot of patience. Otherwise, you will never have a perfect PRC format output.
Quick tips on editing an MS Word eBook:
- Use page breaks after each chapters
- Use line breaks for spaces instead of using “enter” key
- Omit any blank page unless needed
- Be careful on using header, footer, index on paragraphs
Sometimes, even if you edit the source file there are times that there’s still unexpected error that you could see only on output file (converted PRC format) using Mobipocket reader. That’s the time you will search again for that words to make correction. To easily find that, press Ctrl-F and type in the words to be searched.
