How do I post a Trip Report from MS Word?
 

The last trip report I posted I cut and pasted from Microsoft Word. Much to my surprise, I saw "? and <" added to my text.

Can anyone help me and tell me how I can avoid this?

Thanks!

Save your trip report as a text file (.txt) rather than as a .doc file. Then cut and paste.

Thanks, Cassandra!

That may or may not get rid of the ?s and <s.

Fodors big problem in posting MSW docs is the auto-correcting feature in Word, in particular the "smart quotes" and dash symbols. Fodors is not smart enough to recognize other smart software, so in Word go to the Tools/AutoCorrect/AutoFormat and /AutoFormat as You Type menus, then disable (uncheck) the "smart quotes" and "symbol characters" boxes. Generally that will solve your problem. Oh, and if you paste fractions, Fodors won't see the special small-font fractions either, so you'll need to type them out. Note everything will look fine as you paste it into the "Post a Reply" box on Fodors, but when you preview it, you'll probably see where all the goofups are. In my experince trying to edit it in the "edit" screen won't often work, so in that case, back up, correct the Word document, then start all over again with Fodors.

Isn't that just dandy? Welcome to the 21st Century.

Thanks, Gardyloo. I think I might tackle posting my trip report tomorrow night. Yes, it seems much more complicated than it needs to be :D

TTT for Papagoat.

You can also cut and paste it into an email program (like you are going to send it by email) and then cut and paste it again to the Fodors text box from the email program. I have found that this eliminates those pesky unwanted characters throughout the report.

Similar to Statis's suggestion is to paste it into Notepad. Then copy from notepad (after any changes) into Fodor's screen.