Give Our Abilities Time

OK, I'm going to admit it. I only know the most basic HTML code - "a href" and "img src". Come on, I designed www.golnar.com and still had to use FrontPage to make the tables in the MP3 section. So while I believe myself quite computer savvy (I have written Java code and compiled things into the Linux kernel, for example), I am not so good with the HTML.

When writing this blog, I use a single OneNote section (.ONE file). On the bottom are about 15 half-formed ideas, in the middle a tab called "^^^PUBLISHED^^^", and above that tab I drag the completed blog entries after I send them to Blogger to be published.

So, I love the idea of the Blogger add-in for Word. I wish there was a Blogger add-in for OneNote because that's what I use to write these blog entries, but it isn't very hard to do a File-->Send To-->Microsoft Office Word from OneNote, and then press Post or Save As Draft.

Unfortunately, those buttons do not appear when I let OneNote launch Word. In fact, what I have to do is launch Word first, then send the OneNote page to Word, then copy and paste the contents into the first instance of Word. That's kind of annoying. However, it's not annoying enough to stop writing in OneNote -- I just like that I can go to my OneNote section and choose from the blog bits I've started or just start a new one. I even created some stationary to save myself the step of pasting in the Technorati tag you see below. So I like OneNote and would like to stick with it. The reason I don't just paste from OneNote into Blogger's Compose window is that the fonts get all sorts of messed up. Otherwise I would do this and not be composing this blog entry.

OK, so the first thing I noticed was that blogger.dot goes into your profile under Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP whereas the templates that do load go into \Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\STARTUP. But then with some poking around, I noticed that some of the stuff in the shared startup directory (the one under Program Files) was not loading when Word was launched by OneNote either.

I then wanted to see if some templates were conflicting with the instance launched by OneNote so I began uninstalling various add-ins to see if they conflicted. The first to go was RepliGo, which I played with for a little bit in order to read some web pages offline on my Treo during a flight but did not end up looking at them and then I started to get a little creeped out at all the RepliGo icons that I noticed all over my applications. For good measure, since I hadn't used it since I sent out my wedding invitations a year and a half ago, I got rid of the (otherwise excellent though probably not updated since Office 2000) Avery Label Wizard at the same time.

This did not help. I considered removing the excellent (though now fairly aged, and rarely used on my home computer) tool Bullfighter. But it loads fine in both scenarios. What could be the problem?

I am not an utter idiot. I found and read the FAQ. I used both Technorati and the new Google/Blogger search. I do not use Word as my Outlook email editor though that suggestion on this gentleman's blog was the most helpful I found in my search. (Word as Outlook email editor causes problems with normal.dot and toolbars, which is the same problem I'm having. But I learned never to use Word as an email editor because it has always screwed up document management systems. Maybe OneNote has the same problem, which is that it tries to load a crippled copy of Word for speed?)

So basically what I do is, when a blog entry is complete, File-->Send To-->Microsoft Office Word, save the file somewhere temporary, then launch Word, open the file, and send it to Blogger. Once it's published I delete the extra files from my desktop or wherever I saved it. Inevitably Blogger screws up the formatting (particularly URL links) and so I have to spend 10 minutes fixing it up or deleting span tags in the HTML view. So there is no perfect answer for those of us who blog out of OneNote and publish those blogs to Blogger...

P.S. Please excuse any messed up fonts in this post, but if you read the entry, you'll understand why it happened :)

Technorati tag(s): OneNote

Labels: OneNote