Opening existing documents

In Dreamweaver, you can open an existing web page or text-based document, even if it wasn’t created in Dreamweaver. You can open the document and use Dreamweaver to edit it in either Design view or Code view.

If the document you open is a Microsoft Word file that was saved as an HTML document, you can use the Cleanup Word HTML command to remove the extraneous markup tags that Word inserts into HTML files. For more information, see Cleaning up Microsoft Word HTML files.

To clean up HTML or XHTML that was not generated by Microsoft Word, see Cleaning up your code.

You can also open non-HTML text files, such as JavaScript files, XML files, CSS style sheets, or text files saved by word processors or text editors.

To open an existing file:

1. Select File > Open.

   The Open dialog box appears.

   TIP

   You can also use the Files panel to open files. For more information, see Working with files in the Files panel.

2. Navigate to and select the file you want to open.

   NOTE

   If you haven’t already done so, it’s a good idea to organize files you plan to open and edit in a Dreamweaver site, instead of opening them from another location. For information about setting up a Dreamweaver site, see Setting up a new Dreamweaver site.

3. Click Open.

   The document opens in the Document window.

   JavaScript, text, and CSS Style Sheets open in Code view by default. You can update the document while working in Dreamweaver, then save the changes in the file. For information about setting an external text editor for viewing these types of files, see Starting an external editor for media files.