[Old Thread] New way to convert Word Documents to eBooks

[Gorod]

Editor's Comment:
This following post was recently entered by Peter Gorod, and I am delighted to highjack it for the front page. It's exciting to see this sort of tool appear. Peter has written a program to convert from MS Word documents to eReader format complete with tables and charts, etc. It can then be read on multiple platforms including PalmOS and Pocket PC.

I have not used the program myself, so I don't really know anything about it yet (nor can I guarantee its safety), but I encourage the more adventurous of our readers to give it a go and let Peter know on his forum what you think. Be sure to stop by here also to keep us updated on the general reaction! BobR

New way to convert Word Documents to eBooks (FREE)

Hi,

I wrote a program to convert Word Documents to eReader eBooks.

It is easy (just press a button) and complete (chapters, images, links, dozens of things). I wonder if any of the people in these forums would like to give it a try? I would appreciate any feedback.

Check it out at the site given below and let me know what you think. I have set up a forum there for Support - please post there.

Thank you
Peter Gorod
_________________
Publish eBook - Convert structured Word Documents to eBooks with just one click!
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/Gorod/PublisheBook/

[Colin Dunstan]

Peter, this is a great script you wrote. I had trouble first installing it, but when I switched Macro Security to Low in MS Word it did the trick!

Well at least for some documents. I tested it with an e-book in .rtf format (filesize ~2MB). First DropBook was kinda slow (took a few minutes on my Intel Centrino 1.7GHz and CPU usage was 100%) and then I received an error messagebox saying "There were fatal errors in Dropbook. Try correcting your original document to avoid them." The debug window showed the following error (twice):

"Illegal control code starting at "\160? Why would bandits attack a town?\i"

[Gorod]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

Peter, this is a great script you wrote. I had trouble first installing it, but when I switched Macro Security to Low in MS Word it did the trick!

Well at least for some documents. I tested it with an e-book in .rtf format (filesize ~2MB). First DropBook was kinda slow (took a few minutes on my Intel Centrino 1.7GHz and CPU usage was 100%) and then I received an error messagebox saying "There were fatal errors in Dropbook. Try correcting your original document to avoid them." The debug window showed the following error (twice):

"Illegal control code starting at "\160? Why would bandits attack a town?\i"

I thought I'd already answered this, but I must have done something wrong (I probably previewed my post, but never actually submitted it). So here it goes again:

This is a bit slow with large documents, since it does a lot of Find-And-Replace on the document, mostly for special characters and accents.

As for that dropbook error, try looking for that phrase in your document and checking if there is anything potentially strange immediately before it. Set Word to show you paragraph marks and other special characters - I once had this error caused by a couple of strange optional hyphens that were lost (and invisible) in the document.

If the problem persists, drop me a line in my own forums (my site, click "Support") and I'll try to give you more assistance.

And hey, thanks for trying the program! :-)

Peter

[mandochild]

This is absolutely fantastic. I've been trying to make do with text files. This is SO much better than converting to Adobe (sorry!). Thanks to this script, my reading options have just opened up enormously. Thank you many times.

[HarryT]

You're looking at a two and a half year old thread here. Today we have many excellent tools available for creating eBooks. Try, for example, "Book Designer" - it will create virtually any input format and creates multiple output formats.

[NatCh]

Welcome to MobileRead, mandochild! Really cool avatar, by the way!

As HarryT mentioned, you've got a whole bunch more options available that you might not know about, so have a look around and make yourself to home.

[Bob Russell]

We do have lots of great options for making ebooks. It's wonderful!

But, two and a half years old or not, I still use Peter Gorod's MS Word script myself!
It's very simple and easy to adopt, or to remember even if it's been months since using it last.

[mandochild]

Wow - thanks everyone! I had no idea there was such a great site as this until I googled just on the off-chance that I could convert my Word files... I'm fairly new to ebooks and have definitely found lots of "friction" involved. I shall be very interested to see how the new dedicated e-ink readers work out and I will definitely look at some of the other conversion options out there. Let's hope that ebooks come of age SOON and that we get lots of choice and cool added extras.

By the way, has anyone tried converting files to read on their iPod??

[HarryT]

I know that the iPod can display text files, but I'd hate to use it for that . It would make reading on a Smartphone seem like heaven .

[JSWolf]

Take your MS Word document and convert it to HTML and run it through html2lrf, or use Book Designer. Both will work so much better for the Sony Reader.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by mandochild

By the way, has anyone tried converting files to read on their iPod??

Yvan has done this!...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10329

[DaleDe]

Reading books on an iPod is only one of the many topics I cover on my ebook page. http://users.cwnet.com/dalede/ebook.html

[HarryT]

That's a bad link from my browser, Dale - no such site as "users.cwent.com".

[JSWolf]

The URL has been fixed now.

[HarryT]

Thanks!