Editing web page content in an external application

If you want to edit images, Microsoft Word documents, Macromedia Fireworks content, or files of other types on your website, you need to edit that content in the application in which it was created. You can open the appropriate application from within Contribute to edit the file.

Note: You need to use Contribute to edit the file in an external application; changes you make to the local, original source file do not appear on your website.

Before you can use Contribute to start an external application editor, you may need to associate an editor with the type of the file you intend to edit (see Setting file editor preferences). Contribute has preassigned editors for common file types.

To edit content in an external application:

1. To find the content you want to edit, do one of the following:
   • Browse to the page or file that contains the content you want to edit, and then click Edit Page.
   • Click the Choose button in the toolbar, navigate to the file you want to edit, and then click OK.

   Note: If the Contribute browser cannot display the page or file you've selected, you'll see the File Placeholder page.

2. Do one of the following:
   • If you browsed to a page and opened it as a draft, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the element you want to edit, and then select Edit in External Application.
   • If you browsed to a file, click the Edit button in the toolbar.

   Contribute displays the External Application Editing page and starts an external editing application.

   Note: To change your default editor, see Setting file editor preferences.

3. If you are editing an image in Macromedia Fireworks, click No in the Find Source dialog box to indicate that you do not want to edit the source file for this image; you want to edit the image for your website only.
4. In the external application, make changes as necessary; then save your changes and close the application.

   Note: If you are editing in Fireworks, click the Done button in the editing window.

5. In Contribute, click one of the action buttons in the toolbar.

   Tip: Click the Launch link on the External Application Editing page to open the content in the external editor again, if you need to make additional changes.

Related topics

• Editing web page source in an external application

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