A Technical Aside: How to Best Create in Word and Publish in Blogger?
It has been 20 months since I started blogging and during that period, Blogger has turned out to be a surprisingly reliable platform. Blogger is not without its shortcomings, but all things considered, I have been relatively happy creating posts in Microsoft Word, pasting them into Blogger, and adding the finishing touches with Blogger's own functionality.
Recently, however, whenever I paste something from Word into Blogger, the formatting has not translated properly. At first, I would edit the HTML manually in Blogger, with reasonable results given the effort required. This was an acceptable workaround when most of the rogue HTML code preceded the text of my post and could easily be stripped out in one step. Now the quantity of extra Word-generated HTML seems to be increasing and I find myself left with the option of pasting all the extraneous HTML from Word into Blogger or using an intermediate step such as Word->Notepad->Blogger to strip out all formatting, then reformatting the post and adding all HTML from scratch in Blogger. Neither approach is the streamlined process I am looking for (and enjoyed until recently.)
I have investigated a number of alternatives and have yet to find a satisfactory one. Ideally, I would like to create a post in Word and publish it to my blog in one step, without the loss of any links and formatting I create in Word. There must be some good solutions out there. Readers, what can you recommend?
8 comments:
I've had problems with this as well, though I use WordPress. Will be interested in what your readers suggest.
I dunno about Blogger, but in WP I have *disabled the wysiswyg editor* and exclusively type entries in HTML. I compose in OpenOffice, and plan the links to uploads on my site or links to others' sites in the HTML. I have a duplicate directory in my laptop where all the upload files to the website match the tree on the laptop, and I create the files there.
To post, I copy/paste and then FileZilla the uploads (which have the same name and location on the laptop that they do on the web).
Bill -
So far I have not encountered those new problems. I also write my posts in Word and then copy/paste into blogger. I've recently been creating the links in Word also and they've pasted just fine.
Tables and charts I always need to import a .png using blogger and have not been able to copy/paste them from Word.
Rob
I've experienced the same problem and now type my copy directly into my blogging software (TypePad).
That works for me.
You may want to try these:
http://www.wordhtmlcleaner.co.uk/
http://www.zapadoo.com/wordcleaner/
http://textism.com/wordcleaner/
I use Windows Live Writer (it's free) and then publish directly into my blog (emansviews.com).
Great comments, all. Thanks for your input.
At the moment I am putting Windows Live Writer through the paces. So far, so good...and I'll have a more detailed review in another few weeks, when I have kicked the tires a little.
Cheers,
-Bill
Use google docs Wordprocessor. You can copy and paste without the extra html BS.
If not that, use notepad, textpad, or other similar text related processor. The problem with these (not really a problem) is that you have to do your links afterward inside blogger/wordpress.
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