Longtime readers may recall that, a few years ago, I wrote a post detailing how to publish to a SharePoint 2007 blog directly from Word. Well, guess who just yesterday published his first post to a SharePoint 2010 blog and is here to tell you how easy it was? That’s right, this guy! (Miss me?)
The process’s first step is selecting the File tab in Word. Well, actually, that’s not true, the first step is to have created a SharePoint 2010 blog (or have had one created for you), and the second step is to have written the content of a blog post, so technically we’re starting at the third step, but that’s neither here nor there. For our purposes, we’re going to call selecting the File tab in Word from your already written soon-to-be blog post “step one” and go from there, shall we?
Right then, having selected the File tab from our document, select the Save & Send button from your menu of options, then select Publish as Blog Post from the resulting choices and, finally, on this popup, click the Publish as Blog Post button (this time it means business) that appears at the bottom right.
Assuming this is the first time you’ve published to the blog from Word, at this point, a dialog box will appear and will ask that you register your blog account. Click Register Now.
Next, you’ll have to choose your blog provider from the list of available blogging platforms. Note, pleasingly, that, among others, the options include Community Server (which powers Bamboo Nation), but choose SharePoint blog in this case.
At this point, you’re going to register your new SharePoint blog account by entering your blog URL.
But not so fast; before you do that, you must be aware of one catch to the process first. If you click the Help me fill out this section hyperlink that appears in the image above, as noted on the resulting page is that what you need to enter here is “the address of your blog page with no additional information” (emphasis mine);
In my case, this meant that instead of simply copying and pasting the entire URL of the blog as it appears in my browser’s address bar (http://sharingthepoint.org/blog/default.aspx), I needed to truncate it to http://sharingthepoint.org/blog/. After entering the URL and clicking OK, I was helpfully warned, “When Word sends information to the blog service provider, it may be possible for other people to see that information.” Which isn’t of great concern to me in this case, so Yes, OK.
The blog provider in question will be contacted at this point, and you’ll be prompted to log in with your credentials.
Once you’ve successfully authenticated, the blog account registration process is complete;
Word will present your original document with a prompt to [Enter Post Title Here].
After you’ve done so, click the Publish button you’ll find at the far left of the Ribbon.
And, if everything works as smoothly for you as it did for me, you’ll get your version of this pleasing “This post was published…” confirmation that I got yesterday morning.
Happy SharePoint blogging!
(Oh, and needless to say, eagle-eyed readers will have divined from my examples herein that the Sharing the Point tour rides again this September … and this time, we’re heading to Africa! Check out all the details at SharingThePoint.org, and look for some of the updates to appear in Bamboo Nation, as has become our custom.)
