Exporting to HTML from InDesign CS4

Question

I what may be an odd issue.  I am working with InDesign to create client alerts for my firm.  We send these out via email.  Currently we are using a 3rd party application called ExactTarget for the mass-email, then creating the INDD file and exporting to PDF to post to the web as an attachment.  We are converting to using the email campaign too in our new contact database, ContactEase.  This requires creating the email body in HTML.  It would save me a lot of work if we could export the INDD file to a PDF to post to the web AND to an HTML that can be used to send the email. 
Unfortunately, when I use the "Export to Dreamweaver" function in INDD to create the HTML file, I get a very simplistic page that does not reflect my original layout.  I have also tried selecting SWF as the type under "Export."  In this instance, I get the file formatted well, but I can only see the first page.  Has anyone else had experience exporting to HTML from INDD and retaining the formatting?  Is there a step I am forgetting?  Or perhaps an easier way to go about this?  Id' really rather not have to create the page template in HTML and have to continue to basically creating the document twice (once for email and once for web).
Any direction/assistance is appreciated!  Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

To get HTML exporting to work you have to style all the text and then recreate matching CSS styles in your HTML editor. When you export, the Advanced tab (CS3) lets you decide whether to create empty CSS declarations or link to an external CSS doc.
I use one paragraph style for all the text which exports as something like p.mytext, then use character styles for everything else, which get exported as something like span.myhead. The exported XHTML style section might look like this when you choose empty declarations:
p.mytext {}
span.bold {}
span.myhead {}
span.italic {}
span.link {}
span.smallcaps {}
span.subhead {}
Where you need to fill in the properties between the brackets like this:
p. mytext {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
span.bold {
font-weight: bold;
span.myhead {
font-size: 20px;
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
color: #C06000;
span.italic {
font-style: italic;
span.smallcaps {
letter-spacing: 3px;
font-size: 75%;
word-spacing: -2px;
color: #444444;
span.link {
text-decoration: none;
color: #CC9900;
span.subhead {
font-size: 14px;
font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #666666;
font-weight: bold;
letter-spacing: 0.75px;
You have to have a reasonable grip on CSS in order to get it all to work.