Demoronizer, tidy, and various other aps have been discussed here.

Scott7477 is just beginning work on a tut on this general topic (and I'm allegedly helping, though in fact, planetscape has -- IMO -- done most of that by pulling together a formidable collection of refs, cites, etc.) while I may be of little value other than word-butchery.

GrandFather has posted a WYSIWYG editor in CUFP which may be relevant and helpful. I could undoubtedly name many other relevant resources...

BUT...

Were I in your shoes, I would not allow "cut&pasting" of M$word (so-called) .html under any circumstances... for the very good reasons you outline... and
perhaps even more important, would not allow use of any other than a very small subset of html tags for a whole range of taste-, security- and simplicity-reasons and just plain "old-fogey-ism."

On the other hand, the Monastery does provide minimally restrictive methods for a visitor to write some .html. Have you explored those methods?

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• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

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• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.