Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

I think most people tend to view a blog as something that is done entirely online. In other words, because you read the blog online, it’s written online.  This however, is not always true.

There are a handful of offline alternatives to writing your blog that make it easy to create a post and then upload it to your blog.  One option that not many people think to use is Microsoft Word 2007. They have a blog post feature built right in!Setting it up only takes a few minutes, and before you know it, you’ll be all set to go.

Set-up

The first thing that you’ll want to do is Open Microsoft Word 2007.  Then you’ll want to create a new document, and from there you’ll see two options. Either you can create a blank document, or a blog post. Select to create a new blog post.

The first time that you do this, you’ll be presented with the steps for registering your blog.  The first thing you’ll be asked is to select your provider.  They have a list of supported providers, but if yours isn’t listed, don’t worry, you can still do it.  It’ll just take a few extra steps.

First, the listed of supported blogs are:

• Windows Live Spaces
• Blogger
• TypePad
• SharePoint Blog
• Community Server
• WordPress

If your provider isn’t listed, select “other” from the list of providers, and then you’ll go through a separate process of selecting your API, and then entering the URL for your blog.  From there you’ll be asked your user name and password, and then you’ll be all set to go.

What tools are available?

Using Microsoft Word to publish to your blog gives you several great tools to work with that makes the process easier.You’re still presented with the navigational Ribbon up at the top except there are only two tabs – “blog post” and “insert.”

The “blog post” tab will have all of your essential tools for changing the font, color, and size of the text that you’re using. You’ll also have a listing of some of the “Quick Styles” you might want to use (like quoting, or using headers).

You’ll also have the inline spell-check that you’d typically have with a Microsoft Word document which is really helpful. 

Under the “insert tab” you’ll find the options for inserting a table, pictures, charts, and other elements.

Publishing your Post

After your post is written and formatted, you’ll want to be sure you save it. Saving a post is no different then how you would save a document with Word. Just click the save button.

When you’re ready to publish, just click the Publish button. You can either publish as a draft, or publish it immediately to the blog. Once it’s been published, it’ll display a message across the top of your post saying that it was published to your blog, along with the date and time.

Below is what my post looked like after creating it in Microsoft Word and publishing it to my test blog on Blogger.

Wrapping it up

Microsoft Word now creates clean HTML. Previously it didn’t. I was expecting the code for the table that I inserted to be horrendous, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. Nice.

Secondly, if you want to publish images to your blog post, you’ll have to use a picture provider or another storage location like your own server if your blog service provider doesn’t offer an option. If you already have a blog set-up, you know how you handle images.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use Word to publish a post to my test blog. I was also happy to see that the HTML is clean because previously, Microsoft Word wasn’t known for it.

Should you need help, Microsoft has a help page setup that should be able to answer most of your questions. You can find it here.

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