Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Those of you old enough to remember Maxwell Smart from the old Don Adams show "Get Smart!" will get this reference – whenever the secret agent would see through a scam he would say, "Oh, yes, the old blankety-blank trick!" and foil the dastardly plot.

Many times, Office users will have a similar plot. They want to share their files with other users over the web or via e-mail, and they'll fall for the trap that Microsoft sets—which happens when you choose File > Save As > Web Page.

The default option, as you probably know, is the HTM file format. But what happens if you publish such a file locally?

If you read the recent article on Microsoft Producer you've seen similar results – the main HTM file is published along with an entire folder of supporting stuff.

In the case of PowerPoint, for example, this folder will contain various GIF or JPG files that comprise the slide elements or navigation buttons, among other objects, in your slides.

What many people don't realize, however, is that there is another web-friendly file format available in Office applications, including OneNote and Publisher: the *.MHT or single file web page.

Let's see how it works in PowerPoint. Using the Save As Web Page option, we click on the drop down arrow to select the MHT or single file web page for our options.

Figure 324

TIP

In PowerPoint, you have other Web publish options to explore which include showing animations to those viewers who have the Animation viewer plug in loaded and converting fonts.

Now with the web page published locally, double-clicking it opens it in Internet Explorer (if that is your default web browser_.

Figure 325

In the case of PowerPoint you can have access to the Notes panel with a mouse click, and all of the features you would expect when you save PowerPoint as a web page.

Good News and Bad News

So far, I've only given you the good news that applies to this technique – and there is one other positive piece of information I will give you before I drop the hammer.

The reason I really like this idea is not just because it makes it a lot easier to share your files online. Obviously, e-mailing a single web file as an attachment is also a lot easier than trying to attach a file and a supporting folder of tiny supporting graphics and other files.

I also like this method because it can show your recipient what something will look like without giving them the original underlying file to screw up or, dare I say, misappropriate.

If you look at the PowerPoint file, for example, it has a bunch of fairly complex charts in it. If I send the PowerPoint file (*.PPT) or even the PowerPoint Show file (*.PPS), any PowerPoint user can open it and revise it.

But they can't do a whole lot with the MHT file except try to recreate it, which is a lot of work and pain.

Now for the bad news. To view these files, users need to have Internet Explorer 4.0 – yes, friends, this is a Microsoft proprietary file format. It should work on the Mac as well, but these days Internet Explorer is taking a beating and a lot of people are using Mozilla and other browsers as their default.

If this is the case, you will need to explain to your users that double-clicking the file won't open it; instead, they need to use File > Open or drag the MHT file directly into an IE window.

You can do this by dragging the corners of the folder and the application in on the desktop and just dragging the file and dropping it – similar to the way I'm going to do in the next figure with Microsoft FrontPage.

The reason I like this file format so much is that FrontPage supports it as well – so I can make all of my content available in a FrontPage web just be dragging it into the File Folder, or the Navigation panel.

Figure 326

Here I've created a new web and home page, and linked the new MHT file directly to the home page in the web.

If I had saved the file as an HTM web page, I would also need to make sure that I dragged the supporting folder of stuff into the same folder, and the web, and that I published the supporting folder within my web. Given the fact that FrontPage requires that the extensions manage the material properly on the server, this can sometimes cause headaches I don't need.

TIP

Just for the heck of it I tried to open the MHT file in Macromedia Dreamweaver. It nearly regurgitated and didn't understand the format.

But do not despair. Having created the MHT file in PowerPoint, you can publish it using Dreamweaver's FTP capability – or any other FTP program.

Figure 327

In the case of PowerPoint, the MHT version of the file was significantly larger than the original PowerPoint file, which would affect transmission time as an e-mail attachment.

But again, the security benefit outweighs the file size issue because the recipient can do little else with the MHT file than view it in Internet Explorer.

TIP

To e-mail a large MHT file, create a new Compressed File folder on the desktop and drag it inside before sending the zipped folder as your email attachment.

So when you want to show a colleague what a Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher or even some other Microsoft document will look like, save it as an MHT web page, and then post it online or send it as an e-mail attachment.

Then, when they ask you how you did it, tell them you can't reveal the secret since it's the Old MHT trick.

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