A couple of years back I started using Microsoft Windows Live Writer to publish posts on my WordPress.com blogs.
But after some time I was getting used to writing my articles directly in the WordPress editor screens and I forgot about Live Writer.
Windows Live Writer on Windows 10
When I wanted to use it again I had moved on to the Windows 10 OS.
Downloading and installing Windows Essentials 2012 on the system worked, but was not really stable.
So I did not use it and went back to writing in WordPress itself.
Open Live Writer
Now Microsoft got smart at the end of 2015… they give Live Writer to the Open Source community.
It most not have been an easy task to do that with all the code and legal stuff to go through.
But here it is, Open Live Writer.
You can download it from the site, but now it’s also available from the Microsoft App Store!
Once installed, just start it up, choose your blogging platform, give the connection details like Website URL, Username and Password and you are good to go!
If you need or want more instructions? Check out www.shoutmeloud.com post on how to configure Open Live Writer for WordPress Blogs
Writing is now almost like if you write in your favorite word processor.
No distractions, like Menu’s on the left and widgets on the right, just writing 
.
In the above screenshot, you will see mixed languages like Bestand (Dutch for File).
My Windows 10 installation is in Dutch. To use Open Live Writer spelling options in English I had to download the Windows English language pack.
I choose the US language pack version because most of my sites are targeted to the US visitors.
Sorry UK readers, I now there are quite some differences between UK English and US English.
Publish Posts as Drafts
For now, I can write my posts in Live Writer and push it to the blog as a draft. I can finish the post and add my feature images later on. So let's see how that works for now!
So I just uploaded the draft and I am finishing it in WordPress itself
All the inserted images were also uploaded and looked fine. The Alternative text conversion based on the file name was even better than with WordPress.
If you download the post after editing in WordPress you might get some errors. I go some on the captions I added.
Adding a Second Blog Account in Open Live Writer
Adding an extra account into Open Live Writer was a bit more difficult to find. I was expecting it to be a menu item or in the options menu.
Turns out you have to go to the Blog name, use the drop down option and select Add blog account.
You can also use the Manage blog account option and add it in there.
Do I like this Open Liver Writer, Yes. Will I use it more often? I don't know yet.
What I do know is that it really works well, especially if you don't like writing online and want to create your posts off-line.
So question is, will you try it out and start using it? Or do you prefer another offline blogging tool?
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