Next Challenge - lock enewsletter

[rlhanson]

Okay - I have a client which I create custom html enewsletter templates for use with icontact....

The issue is she does not want to have to place the content in by paragraph to maintain the formatting in place.
When she copies and pastes the content from a Word document, it changes the formatting of the font and since her doc and my html both have line-spacing at 150% it creates these great big spaces in the text...

I have tried making a locked template in dreamweaver, but the WSIWG editor in icontact disregards the locked portions.

I have tried making formatted divs with inline styles. This creates a text box which also loses the formatting when pasted from a Word doc.

Does anyone have any idea how I could make the entire newsletter template locked except the content area and how to maintain the existing formatting when text is copied and pasted??

Oh, btw, forget anything that would require editing an actual html file - this is a no go for her.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

If anyone is saying to themselves "how does rlhanson end up with client requests like this?" - just so you know, I am asking myself the same!

[Matt]

Does the formatting remain when you type the text into a standard notepad document? (.txt) That might be one approach then your template handles the font styling.

[charlesh]

Try this:

Open Notepad in Start>Run. Copy and paste from word document into the notepad. Then, Select all CTRL-A in notepad and copy that. Then, paste it where you want to. This will remove any of Word's stupid formatting and it is a quick way to do it.

This follows along the same line as Matt's post.

[rlhanson]

Charles and Matt -

Thanks for the advice - In the past, I've tried instructing her to do exactly what you suggested - she's basically unwilling.
I looked around at other enewsletter template designs and they all seem to be doing what I am as far as the coding.
One thing I did notice is that they charge twice what I have prices set as... so I thought maybe there was a secret to making the templates editable by the normal client.

I'm actuallly pretty frustrated with everything right now...thinking about a lot of different options as far as my business goes.
I'm definately struggling with business the last few months and am thinking I need to re-evaluate my prices. Tired of making things extremely affordable for new and start-up businesses and then not being treated like my time has any value.

Anyway - thanks for the input!

[Matt]

Well if she is unwilling you can always offer her the alternative which is to send the word doc to you and you will do the notepad thing for a fee. That should make her a little more willing to put in the extra time to do it herself I'd think.