Convert notes with ease from Word Doc to Basecamp-friendly Textile

I wrote a blog post several months ago about a solution I had come across that saved me some time.

The issue is that I take profuse notes in a Word doc when I’m meeting with clients. Since I can type about 9.6x faster and 187% more legibly than I can write by hand.  I typically write out task items and notes like this:

Task #1

• This is important to do
• This should also be done

Task #2

• This is uber-important
• Don’t forget to do this, or client will kill you

When I’m done taking all my notes, I add those to Basecamp for the rest of the team, and so we have a nice backup that can also be searched later by our staff or the client.

The Problem is that Word formatting doesn’t allow a simple copy/paste into Basecamp.  And while I’m pretty savvy at writing in Textile, I’m not as fast and therefore don’t do it when I’m working in Word.

The Solution that I found several months ago was a Macro for Word that would convert a .docx into a format that is ready for MediaWiki.  That’s not exactly what I needed, because it’s close – but it’s not Textile. I was still having to manually edit my notes and that was a pain.

The New Solution is that I’ve hacked the original file from InfoPro.com to meet my needs exactly, and the result is a perform conversion from Word to Textile that I can copy and paste without any editing! Thanks to those guys for giving me the start to work with, because I would never have taken the time to do this if I had to start from scratch!

Installation

1. Download our Word2Textile macro (<-right-click and Save As)
2. Start Word
3. Bring up the Visual Basic Editor (Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor)
4. From the VBE, import the macro library (File->Import File…) and select the file you downloaded

Usage

1. Open a word document to convert
2. Run the Word2Textile macro by bringing up the Macros dialog (Tools->Macro->Macros), selecting Word2Textile and clicking Run.
3. The macro converts the document to Textile markup and places a copy of the content on the system clipboard.
4. Open up the Basecamp message or writeboard you will use, and be sure you are in Textile/HTML mode. It should look like this:
5. Paste your content (which is automatically copied to your clipboard by the Macro) and Voila!

If this little technique saves you as much time as it saves me, then you’re welcome.

About James Hutto

Uniquely talented because of his super-geeky Information Technology background. He's a problem solver and reformed I.T. pro who worked as a senior systems engineer in the Fortune 1000, but excelled in communications and business-centric projects. Climbing the ladder for the man got old, so he decided to start his first web design and IT consulting company came in 2000, and co-founded Valeo in 2005. Follow on Twitter or check him out on LinkedIn.