WD: HTML Document Displays Tags When Opened

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0a, 6.0c
• Microsoft Word for Windows NT, version 6.0
• Microsoft Word for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0a
• Microsoft Word for the Macintosh, versions 6.0.1, 6.0.1a
• Microsoft Word 97 for Windows
• Microsoft Word 98 Macintosh Edition
• Microsoft Internet Assistant for Word, versions 1.0, 1.0z
• Microsoft Internet Assistant for Word for Windows 95, version 2.0z
• Microsoft Internet Assistant for Word for the Macintosh, version 2.0

SYMPTOMS

When you open a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) document as HTML (select HTML Document in the Files of Type list), you see the HTML tags instead of the formatted text.

CAUSE

This problem may occur when you open an HTML document as text only, and then save the document as HTML. Because you saved the text version as HTML, Word saves all of the text you see, including the tag delimiters ("<" and ">") as part of the actual Web page.

In addition, if you now open the document as text only, you can see that Word has surrounded every paragraph with the <P> and </P> elements. This is how Word converts all the text in the Normal style when you open a document as text, and save it as HTML.

RESOLUTION

To restore your original HTML document, follow these steps:

1. Open the document in Word.

2. Select all of the text, and then click Copy on the Edit menu.

3. Create a new document based on the Normal template.

4. In the new document, click Paste on the Edit menu.

5. Save the document as Text Only, but change the file name extension to .htm instead of .txt. (Omit this step if you are using Word for the Macintosh.)

6. Close the document. When Word displays the message

         This document may contain formatting which will be lost upon 
         conversion to Text Only format. To Preserve the initial document, 
         click No to exit this dialog, then save the document in Word format 
         before converting.
   

   click Yes to save as Text Only.

7. Reopen the document.