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Two questions

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:46 pm
by Birmingham
1. When I submit using Microsoft Word files the " " become ? ? in the submitted text. Am I doing something incorrectly?

2. I live in the Central Time Zone, which is GMT -6 during Standard Time and GMT-5 during Daylight Savings Time. I entered GMT-6. Does your site automatically adjust or should I edit the time?

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 5:40 am
by Dave Panchyk
As for 1., you should make everything plain text first; copy and paste everything from Word into Notepad (if you haven't downloaded TextPad yet). Copy and paste from Notepad into any Web fields after saving the file as a .TXT format file within Notepad.

Honestly, I do the process in reverse, writing in TextPad then pasting it into Word to see if its spell- and grammar-checking finds anything I missed. Then I copy from TextPad into any Web form and send Word back to its cage.

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 5:54 am
by writewellcfl1
Dave, this is good advice. We're not really sure where the glitches in "translation" occur, but I would try following Dave's advice. Also, you will need to change the time zone manually. It doesn't seem to update automatically.

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:26 am
by Keesa
Hi, Birmingham--and welcome!

I'm not quite sure, but it sounds to me like you have curly quotes enabled on your computer. Curly quotes cannot be read by the webforms, so the form ends up transforming them into something it can read--in this case, question marks.

Working from Notepad, as Dave suggested, is a great way to work around that (and a thousand and one other little problems) because Notepad also doesn't support curly quotes. (Nor does it auto-format ellipses or em dashes, two other "problem characters".) Alternately, type directly into the webform (not recommended for the long summary...) or disable auto-formatting in Word. (Insert >> AutoText >> AutoText. Select the Auto Format As You Type tab and uncheck all the little tickyboxes in the "Replace as you type" section (the middle section).

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:27 am
by writewellcfl1
Thanks Keesa, that's another good insight. :D

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:42 am
by Keesa
You're welcome! :D