VIU

Why MS Office is not Web-Ready

It is important to ensure your students can open documents you post on the web.

In an online environment we cannot assume students have MS Office software on their home computers.

Many of your learners will not have MS Office and will be unable to read files you post in a Word, Excel or PPT formats.

For example, if you want your students to view a PowerPoint online, then students need MS PowerPoint software or PowerPoint viewer installed on their computers.

Therefore we highly recommend you provide online documents and files in web-friendly formats.

How to Convert Docs to Web-Ready Formats

Convert your MS Office documents to web pages or PDF documents; both formats have become standards for web-based courses.

Word processed documents are best saved in RTF format – "Rich Text Format" – this allows any Windows or Mac system to read .rtf documents you provide to students or they send to you online (as attachments, assignment uploads, etc.)

To convert MS documents to PDF you will need PDF creator software installed on your computer.

Adobe Acrobat is most commonly used for PDF conversion (unfortunately this software is expensive, but there are a number of free PDF programs available for download.

We recommend using PDF 995, which can be downloaded free from http://www.pdf995.com/download.html.

 

Need assistance converting documents to web-ready formats – contact the Online Development Team at online@viu.ca.

Considerations for Digital Media and Scanning

It’s also important to select web-appropriate formats for digitizing media and to complete a compression process:

  • Compression will reduce the file size of the image and make it quicker to load in an Internet browser.

  • The MET Centre has computer software for scanning and compressing images.

 

Need assistance converting or compressing digital images – contact the Online Development Team at online@viu.ca