Windows Live Writer is discontinued. It now lives as Open Live Writer here.
Windows Live Writer is a great blog authoring tool but if you want sophisticated table layout and design, you must go to MS Word. But Word is not as good as WLW as a blog writer. Here is how you get best of both worlds…
The problem
Every serious blogger knows that Windows Live Writer has been and still is one of the most comprehensive authoring tools. Of course there are many others (free and paid) for Windows and Mac. But WLW is definitely an option you cannot ignore.
Having said that, there is only ONE deficiency in WLW from a pure content creation point of view – Tables.
Default table looks like this 
This is a 3×3 table.
And this is all the customization you get…
Compare this with the amazing array of Design and Layout options which Microsoft Word is famous for.
Why not use MS Word as the blog authoring tool?
This is not a comprehensive list… but these deficiencies make it unusable, from my point of view.
- Theme is not shown
- Live Writer Plug-ins don’t work
- No Insert Post option in Hyperlink
On the other hand, Word does give beautiful Tables, Charts and SmartArt.
How to get best of both worlds?
One option is to create useful things like SmartArt and Tables in Word and save as filtered HTML. Consider this simple two by two table…
Word Filtered HTML produces 69 lines of code (only STYLE and DIV). It is not optimized for HTML – unlike Windows Live Writer which creates compact HTML.
So what is the option? Use BOTH.
Yes it sounds like a wrong move. But it works and works beautifully…
- Write a blog in Windows Live Writer as usual
- Don’t create the tables in WLR
- Open MS Word
- Choose Share – Post to Blog
- First time, it will ask you to configure the blog account. Do that.
- Create the Table in Word and format it as required
- Post to a TEMP blog post as a draft
- Go to WordPress (or other supported platforms), copy the HTML and paste it into the Code view of Windows Live Writer at the right position
- That’s it!
Remember that Windows Live Writer may not show all the formatting which Word is capable of. But the blog will show it correctly.
3 Responses
This does not seem to very efficient way.
What I normally do. I create a table in word or if I have some thing in excel then I take from excel too.
Then i go at http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/ this site and copy the world/excel table and then convert it into the simple html. Copy that html and save the same in WLW source.
This also works on non word tables also if the uniform delimiter is there.
Thanks for your inputs Kamal. I tried the site. It loses all the formatting done in Excel or Word tables.
What I need is not just HTML tables. I want all the formatting from Word to be maintained.so that I don’t have to manually write CSS styles in the HTML.
Yes I agree that this method looks cumbersome at first. But actually I have ONE draft blog post in Word. Which I keep reusing for all the tables I need in WLW. Word has such amazing formatting control for tables that it is worth putting that extra effort in getting good HTML without writing a single style manually.
In summary, simple tables – create in WLF. Tables or delimited text with simple formatting – use Tableizer. Complex and good looking tables – use the Word blog method.
Yes. Agree on the use of MS word for complex customise tables. It also depends on the wordpress theme you are using. The theme which I use has set a style for table also so I don’t have to do anything for table formatting. My theme takes care of that.