Most forums use a formatting code called UBB (Universal Bulletin Board) This code is far less likely to allow user abuse than HTML.

However converting documents is not as simple process as we would like.

I have spent the day looking for a workable solution.

I use MSWord, so this is what I came up with:

Make sure the formating of your document is as simple and clean as possible.

Save your document as as a Web Page (Filtered) - this removes Microsoft specific tags, making the job a little easier.

In MSWord, Go to View - if View does not have a listing for View HTML or Source, go to File -> Web Page Preview

This will open your browser. Most web browsers have a View-> Page Source  option. View the source code and copy it onto your ClipBoard.

Go to HTML2UBB. This will convert the HTML to UBB code.

Many of the line break issues have been handled and extra space issues have been dealt with but... MSWord doesn't produce clean HTML  even in filtered mode. The line breaks may or may not appear as you want them. These can be edited either in the HTML2UBB text box or on the forum Message Box.

As I indicated, I will be working on this and will (hopefully) soon have an even better HTML to UBB converter up and running.

I will cheerfully accept suggestions and/or advice on this. Also, if you are running a Mac, instructions on converting documents to HTML will be greatly appreciated.

If you use open office, the HTML conversion is clean, except still no joy on centered text.  For my test, I open my MS Word doc in Open Office Writer, then:

File --> Save As / Choose HTML Document.
File --> Preview in Web Browser

Use the browser tools to view HTML source, and cut and paste.

The conversion tool doesn't seem to understand the <p align=center>...</p> tags (and both Word and OOWriter do this), and it's equally confused by <center>...</center> tags.

You've been busy.  This takes away most of the pain of conversion to post here.  I suspect that the pain might be gone completely if their using OO Writer, but I'll need to verify that.