How to download a whole topic

[billd766]

This was a question asked and answered back in 2010 and at that time at the bottom of the topic page there was a download icon next to the print icon. The topic was eventually archived.

However when I looked this afternoon both the print and the download icons are no longer there.

So how can I download a whole topic from the forum to my PC?

The topic I am interested in is pigs 101 started by IsaanAussie Posted 2010-09-27 14:05:47

The topic is 70 pages long and I am trying to review it for a mate who has no PC.

[george]

Click on the Share button on top of the topic and you can save, print and share from there

[MJCM]

What about clicking

here:

and then

[Crossy]

Well, one learns something new every day

[billd766]

Thank you very much for your help guys

That worked very well and I learned something too.

Now the next silly question is to to convert that HMTL format that it is downloaded in to something easy to work such as MS Word.

PDF is possible but tricky to edit 70 pages.

[MJCM]

I just noticed something, when I press download, it doesn't download the whole Topic but it just downloads the first page (or page you are on) of the Topic, so in that particular Topic you have to individually download 70 Pages.

But the downloaded page (page 1) opens just fine in Word 2010, and there you can remove some of the formatting.

It will take some effort to do this.

Edit 1: I am just trying to clean up Page 1 in Word and there already 2 Things I notice.

a- the page count started off without cleaning at 26 pages (so 70 * 26 = approx 1820 Pages)

b- The quotes are (somewhat) messed up, so it can be hard the follow who says what.

IMHO you should just Cut & Paste the most important pieces of the topic directly into Word, instead of trying to get and print the whole topic.

Edited September 25, 2014 by MJCM

[billd766]

I just noticed something, when I press download, it doesn't download the whole Topic but it just downloads the first page (or page you are on) of the Topic, so in that particular Topic you have to individually download 70 Pages.

But the downloaded page (page 1) opens just fine in Word 2010, and there you can remove some of the formatting.

It will take some effort to do this.

Edit 1: I am just trying to clean up Page 1 in Word and there already 2 Things I notice.

a- the page count started off without cleaning at 26 pages (so 70 * 26 = approx 1820 Pages)

b- The quotes are (somewhat) messed up, so it can be hard the follow who says what.

IMHO you should just Cut & Paste the most important pieces of the topic directly into Word, instead of trying to get and print the whole topic.

What I was hoping to do was to download the whole topic in Word and then cut and paste.

I figure that after I have edited it I will be able to get it down to some 15 or 20 pages plus the extra pages in the links.

I know that in many threads somebody makes a post, somebody else replies directly and so on so I may have to delete most of the last reply to get to one bit I need and then stick a post ref number on it to fall back on.

It is not that I am lazy but to copy and paste 70 pages into Word is a bit time consuming especially as I then have to edit the whole document as well.

Do you ever get those days when you wish you hadn't said yes to helping a mate out, especially when you find out how much work is involved after saying yes?

Edited September 26, 2014 by billd766

[jpinx]

I frequently convert webpages to .pdf format for the sake of printing. I see it will also convert to postscript. This is in Iceweasel/firefox.

Select > File > Print >

hth

[jpinx]

Depending on how you feel about diy-ing it - you could run a simple script to wget every page of a topic and append it to an .html file, then open the huge file and select >edit > Select all and then copy that into a plain text file or whatever you want.

[billd766]

Depending on how you feel about diy-ing it - you could run a simple script to wget every page of a topic and append it to an .html file, then open the huge file and select >edit > Select all and then copy that into a plain text file or whatever you want.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Well I have the file downloaded in HMTL as it comes from the forum but to copy and edit it I have to go online.

If I am online then at this time I will copy and paste to word perhaps 10 pages at a time to make a monster word file and then edit, cut and paste the old way. A bit like doing long division when I was at school decades ago.

Fortunately I am retired and it gives me a project to play with which will keep me off street corners for a few days.

[jpinx]

if you have the whole topic in one html file then editing to contents into a suitable text file should be straightforward. Did you try using google docs?

Or you can edit it as a pdf if you have adobe, or a postscript,

I'm not too familiar with what happens to .html file if you open them in some MS doc editor

Edited September 26, 2014 by jpinx

[MJCM]

<snip>

I'm not too familiar with what happens to .html file if you open them in some MS doc editor

I have opened the 1st page of the Topic in Word and this is what it looks like (please note: there is one page before this one, but that is just TV blah blah )

So you see, it needs a lot of cleaning.

[jpinx]

Ouch - That's only one page. I was suggesting to tack all the pages together in one html file and work on that -- or print it to a .pdf file and then to paper and hand it over

[MJCM]

To print that whole topic it will come to (without cleaning) to approx 1400 (nope sorry its 1800) pages. I hope you have enough Ink for that in your printer

Edit 1: I will see what I can do, I will try something and report back in the next couple of days.

Edited September 26, 2014 by MJCM

[jpinx]

The first 2 pages of the topic came to 10 pages as a .pdf -- only 340 to go

The .ps is there as well, but I've no idea if it's any good - no windows here

pigs101.pdf

pigs101.ps

Edited September 26, 2014 by jpinx

[billd766]

1 I am just making a start on copying each of the 70 pages to Word.

2 Next I will edit the replies to take out all the post replies and all the posts that don't have much to do with the subject.

3 When that lot is filtered I can then do a spell check and change the fonts to what I want in font and size.

4 If that works OK I hope to end up with less than 20 pages which I can then print off and collate along with any drawings, photos, downpoads etc and happiness and sanity may prevail once again.

I may post a scream or two and perhaps a gibbering fit in this thread if it gets too much for me.

Thanks for all your help and advice.

[MJCM]

Stop !!!

I already downloaded all HTML Pages via Wget. (Easy)

Do you want them, send me a PM with your email and I will send them

Edited September 26, 2014 by MJCM

[MJCM]

here is the description how I did it

Pre req:

Download this file : http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/wget/1.11.4-1/wget-1.11.4-1-dep.zip
Download this file : http://jaist.dl.sourceforge.net/project/gnuwin32/wget/1.11.4-1/wget-1.11.4-1-bin.zip

Extract only the files in the BIN directory and put them in the same directory

Then put the following text in a batch file

for /l %%x in (2, 1, 70) do wget -O page_%%x.htm http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/401262-pigs-101-a-start/page-%%x

This will download all 70 pages (except the 1st one (you need to do that manually))

Edited September 26, 2014 by MJCM

[billd766]

The first 2 pages of the topic came to 10 pages as a .pdf -- only 340 to go

The .ps is there as well, but I've no idea if it's any good - no windows here

pigs101.pdf

pigs101.ps

Thanks for that.

I have just downloaded the first 10 pages and 250 posts of the 70 page topic and I now have a Word post of some 226 pages long.

No matter it is giving me something to do.