Documented Disconnect!
I have been driven to frustration this week and it is has really driven me nuts that a very simple thought does not exist…. I have a “problem” or I should say a “want” to store my documents in a searchable form that I can add notes and other thoughts to as a project progresses. Saving old documents to a directory makes it too easy to delete, a file server makes it too easy to forget and just attaching it to a webpage (sharepoint, document server, ect..) is useless. I don’t want to download > open > read > edit > close program > edit page (if needed). I just want to click to see the old document read, move on to whatever. I also don’t want to sit here 5 years later and hope the document hasn’t been corrupted. I would like the information stored in a data base and simply “searched”. I have blogs that date back years and have no problem being rendered with the same information I put up years ago.
So of the documents I want to store like this are my college papers (word documents), job proposals, old resumes, and the project quotes I generate for work. Just like a stupid blog entry from 3 years ago, I might have use for it later. So I thought a wiki type program would be a good solution for this… Something like codeplex, sourceforge, mediawiki or the like would work…
Enter the problem… There is no Microsoft Word to Wiki converter.
There are a few Macro’s that have “some success”, but the best they will do is just convert simple text to wikitext. That still makes me do all the work… I could just copy and paste to a WYSIWYG editor the relevant text in the document and that would be the same.
There is a Word2Wiki plugin that has been undeveloped for at least 2 years… Which sounded great, until I found out the developer is no longer supporting it. That is a problem, since I would be relying on deadware. From what I could find it looks to have been a great idea and what I was looking for, but it is no longer being developed.
I came across DekiWiki and was excited to find out it had a desktop publishing program that is an add-in for Word and Outlook. Great!! DekiWiki is also open source…. Even better! The desktop connector is only for the paid version of DekiWiki…. Crap. So unless I can cough up the hundreds of dollars to purchase, I am hosed.
There is one last option and it maybe what I finally do, until Microsoft makes a “publish to wiki” option or I find a plug-in (I would pay for that happily… well within reason) and that is Open Office. Apparently Open Office has a “publish to wiki” function and it can open .doc and .docx files. So if all else fails I might do that, but again it is using several programs and is not just automatic.
In reality I don’t care what type of system I use, I just want to have the document published to a server and be able to add “other” information to it to keep a history of projects. Both active and inactive for my future reference… which eliminates the corporate SharePoint portal.
I just want to know why is there a missing link between Microsoft Office and Wiki’s? I guess it is back to the drawing board and I will look for another solution….
Related posts:
- Office 14 (It's out there)
- Where Open Source Fails
- A Hack Job….
- It Saddens Me….
- WHS (Part III): That was fast!