Google Docs is ….useless?

I just discovered something NASTY: the HTML export on Google docs is totally useless. BR tags everywhere instead of P tags. What was google/writerly thinking?

Over the last year or two I have been keeping more and more of my personal documents and record keeping  on Google Docs, mainly for safety reasons. Recently I wrote an entire essay on Google Docs, intending to transfer it over to my blog when I was done.

But alas! When I pasted over to Live Writer, I see nothing but carriage returns (regardless of whether I copy/paste with my mouse or export to HTML). I even tried copying HTML content over to the WordPress edit window. Still awful.

My solution was to transfer the text content over to NoteTab Light (a free program), then copy/paste it over to Live Writer. Problem Solved!

(Even though I didn’t need to use them in this particular case, NoteTab Light has several text processing functions that has saved my skin many times. I endorse this product highly and have even paid for the professional version of the product.  But the free version NoteTab Light is every bit as good.

Google’s stupidity explains why I do most of my composition & editing with Live Writer & WordPress.  I use Note Tab Lite for raw editing, Personal Brain for outlining & organizing & mindmapping and XML Oxygen for structured writing.

June 15 Update: The situation is not as bleak as I feared. Old Google Docs did have this problem, but Google Docs recently improved to a version that is more HTML friendly. Strangely though, the content is contained within SPAN tags instead of P tags (which might be almost as bad).  For older documents, I see a mix of BR tags and P tags, so it may depend on how content was created/pasted.