I needed to print a Wikipedia article for SWMBO's Spanish class this morning. I was able to save the article as an html file on my desktop, but my print options were limited to choosing which pages I could print or not print.

Is there a simple, non-technical way that I can delete portions of an html file, maybe even cut and paste within it? Or do I have to know about html editing and have the appropriate tools?

I feel kind of like I did 30 years ago when I was teaching myself the basics of Unix, and everything I learned only served to expand the horizons of my ignorance.

tanstaafl.

I would think there should be some third-party software to convert (or rather format) WikiPedia output to the file-type of your choice, such as a Word file, but I'm not finding anything while searching right now. Mostly because if you use the word WikiPedia in Google, you'll get mostly WikiPredia content. I do mean something that would read the Wiki markup itself, not the HTML representation, which is itself rendered from the Wiki markup.

If you want to preserve the formatting while keeping the file as HTML, without any special tools or software, then you can open it in a standard text editor like Notepad.

You should be able to delete sections/portions easily by following one basic rule.

Always make sure that any HTML tags are either kept or removed as a matching pair.

You don't really need to know what the tags do to make simple edits such as removing text.

What this means is that when deleting content, either do not touch HTML tags when cutting out text between them, or make sure you remove them in pairs when deleting longer portions of the file.

Tags are similar to the ones used here on the BBS, but using pointy braces < > instead. A closing tag includes a slash before the tag identifier. For example, the paragraph tag <p> and its closing tag, </p>

If you see a whole paragraph you want to remove, it should be totally safe to remove from the open tag to the closing tag without altering the remaining formatting.

Load it into Microsoft Word?

Peter

If you use your SWMBO's Mac, this is pretty easy. You have a few options:

1. Open the HTML file in TextEdit. It will open as a rendered web page view by default, and you can just trim out the pieces you don't want just like any other word processor.

2. Open the origional URL in Safari, then select what you want, choose copy (right click, or Cmd-C, or edit-copy) then paste it into TextEdit. Or you can drag and drop highlighted sections you want. This will include graphics and text formatting, but some of the more fancy HTML formatting might be lost.

Similar methods may work for you by opening the HTML file in Word or an equivalent Windows program, but I don't have easy access to Windows or Office currently to verify for you.

IIRC, in IE you can select portions of a page, right click and select to print the selection.

Thank you, Bruno! That is exactly the information I was looking for.

tanstaafl.