Import from Word

If you or one of your teams already has content in Word, you can import individual documents or a .zip file of multiple documents into your knowledge base.

How the Word import works

We strip out a lot of the proprietary Word formatting to streamlined HTML that will work with your knowledge base's default styles. (If you've copied and pasted Word into the article editor before, the Word importer basically does this process using the "Clean" formatting option.)

If the importer can't convert the content properly, it errors.

Before you begin

Before you begin, you'll need access to the Word document(s) you'd like to import. If you want to import multiple Word documents at once, create a .zip file archive that contains all the Word documents.

Choose the import type that makes sense for your documents and follow the appropriate instructions below.

Our importer can:

• Import as one Article: Create a single article from a single Word document.
• Import as multiple Articles: Create multiple articles from a single Word document.
• Import from Zip Archive: Create multiple articles from multiple documents.

For single article and zipped file imports, the first heading in the document becomes the article title and the body of the article is everything that follows.

For single document as multiple articles imports, the heading tag you select becomes the article title, and the text beneath it becomes the article body.

Import as one article

Follow these steps to import a Word document as a single article:

1. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Tools > Imports. The Import content page opens.
2. Under File-based imports, select Word documents. The Import Word document page opens.
3. Select As one Article. The Upload your Word docx file modal opens:
   Sample single article upload modal
4. To create the imported article within an existing category, start typing the name of the category in Parent category. A dropdown appears as you type. Select the category from that list. To create this article as a top-level article, don't enter anything in Parent category. 
5. The Word importer defaults to Published for the Article publishing status. To import your article with a different status, select the dropdown and select the status you'd like to use.
6. To Import file, drag and drop a Word document into the box or select the browse link to open a window to browse to the file on your computer.
7. Once you've added the file, select Upload and import this file to begin the import. A progress bar displays.

Word imports take several minutes to process, even for small documents. Feel free to navigate away and come back to this page later.

Once the import is complete, the page displays a confirmation message. 

If your import fails, the page displays a failure message. Contact us and send us the Word document that had issues and we'll do our best to figure out what's going on!

Import as multiple articles

Follow these steps to import a Word document as multiple articles:

1. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Tools > Imports. The Import content page opens.
2. Under File-based imports, select Word documents.
3. Select As multiple Articles. The Upload your doc/docx file modal opens:
   Sample multiple articles upload modal
4. To create the imported articles within an existing category, start typing the name of the category in Parent category. A dropdown appears as you type. Select the category from that list. To create the imported articles as top-level articles, don't enter anything in Parent category.
5. The Word importer defaults to Published for the Article publishing status. To import your article with a different status, select the dropdown and select the status you'd like to use.
6. Use the Article break tag dropdown to select which heading level you want to use to identify the start of a new article. This importer assumes you're using header 1, header 2, and so on in the document. Whatever break tag you use will be used to generate the articles' titles, with the text following that header level as the article body.
7. To Import file, drag and drop a Word document into the box or select the browse link to open a window to browse to the file on your computer.
8. Once you've added the file, select Upload and import this file to begin the import. A progress bar displays.

Word imports take several minutes to process, even for small documents. Feel free to navigate away and come back to this page later.

Once the import is complete, the page displays a confirmation message. 

If your import fails, the page displays a failure message. Contact us and send us the Word document that had issues and we'll do our best to figure out what's going on!

Import from zip archive

Follow these steps to import multiple Word documents from a zip file:

1. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Tools > Imports. The Import content page opens.
2. Under File-based imports, select Word documents.
3. Select From Zip Archive. The Upload your zip file modal opens:
   Sample single article upload modal
4. To create the imported articles within an existing category, start typing the name of the category in Parent category. A dropdown appears as you type. Select the category from that list. To create the imported articles as top-level articles, don't enter anything in Parent category.
5. The Word importer defaults to Published for the Article publishing status. To import your article with a different status, select the dropdown and select the status you'd like to use.
6. To Import file, drag and drop your zip file into the box or select the browse link to open a window to browse to the file on your computer.
7. Once you've added the zip file, select Upload and import this file to begin the import. A progress bar displays.

Word imports take several minutes to process, even for small documents. Feel free to navigate away and come back to this page later.

Once the import is complete, the page displays a confirmation message. 

If your import fails, the page displays a failure message. Contact us and send us the zip file that had issues and we'll do our best to figure out what's going on!