November 27, 2015

Word as a Blog Editor

Filed under: Main — Tags: — admin @ 12:01 am

In my book Word For Dummies, I don’t write about using Microsoft Word to write blog posts. It’s something Word can do, but it’s more of an esoteric feature, one with only a small audience, and something that, honestly, Word doesn’t really do well.

Sure, you can write a blog post in Word, copy the text, then paste it into your blog editor. Because blogs appear on the web (blog derives from web log), however, not every formatting feature available in Word translates easily to a blog post. Even so, it’s something you can do.

The official method of making a blog post in Word involves two steps.

First, you need a blog. It can be an account at a blog hosting service or your own blog on a website, such as my Wamblog. That account must be associated with Word on your computer. Word 2016 is compatible with the following blog providers:

  • Blogger
  • SharePoint blog
  • Telligent Community
  • TypePad
  • WordPress

Word might recognize other blog hosts as well. The service must have a remote-posting capability and that feature must be active.

Second, you need to write the blog post and share it with your blog. That’s the easy part.

To add a blogging hosting account in Word 2016, follow these steps:

1. Click the File tab.
2. Choose Share from the items listed on the left side of the window.
3. Choose Post to Blog, then click the Post to Blog button.

At this point, the document you’re editing opens in a new window. The view changes to Web Layout View. The Blog Post tab appears, along with an Insert tab, and the rest of the tabs vanish. That’s because you’re now editing a blog post and not all of Word’s abilities are available.

If you’ve not yet configured your blog hosting service account, you see the Register a Blog Account dialog box. Continue with these steps:

4. Click the Register Now button to configure your blog hosting account.
5. Choose the provider from the list.
6. Supply the information as prompted, such as the blog URL, your user account name, password, and so on.
7. Continue working the steps to confirm the account and associate it with Word.

If everything goes well, the account is associated and you’re ready to start remote blog posting from within Word. You can always add more accounts or adjust account info by clicking the Blog Post tab, and in the Blog group, click the Manage Accounts button.

At this point you move on to the second part, which is writing the blog post. Keep in mind that you have a limited selection of Word’s commands. Also note that pictures may not come across on the blog the same as in Word — if at all.

When you’re ready to post, click the Blog Post tab, and in the Blog group click the Publish button, as illustrated in Figure 1. Choose Publish to instantly publish the post or choose Draft to save the post to the service, where you can examine, edit, and then publish it later.

Figure 1. The Blog Post tab in Word 2016.

Figure 1. The Blog Post tab in Word 2016.

I tried this feature on the Wamblog and it worked! In fact, this post started out in Word, then I saved it to the Wamblog and edited it later online. I had to: Word did a mediocre job with the formatting, so it was necessary for me to do some touchup. All in all, however, it works.

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