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How to start Word with a specific template

~ Vitalie Ciobanu
  1. Open Word the usual way.
  2. In the template selection view, select the template you want and click Create. For example, Blog Post.
  3. When Word opened your document, click Save As and select Word Template in the Save as type drop-down box.

    Path should change automatically to your Custom Office Templates directory.
    Give your template a name. For example Blog, to keep it simple. At this point, you can close this document.

  4. On your Desktop or wherever you want, right click and select New – Shortcut.

  5. In the location field, add full path to winword.exe file; default location for 2016 version is “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16”. Also, you need to specify the location and name of your template file. Mine is in “D:\_Main Documents\Documents\Custom Office Templates” so my full path will be (including quotes and template name): “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE” /t”D:\_Main Documents\Documents\Custom Office Templates\Blog.dotx”

    Make sure there is a space before /t switch and there is no space between the /t switch and template path. Click Next.

  6. Give your new shortcut a name; Blog from Word for example. Click Finish.

  7. Your new shortcut is now ready for use. Double click it and Word will open using your new template without asking anything else.

Optionally, it’s more a nice to have actually, you can personalize your shortcut with a custom icon so that you can quickly differentiate it from other Word files and shortcuts.

  1. Right click your new shortcut and select Properties.
  2. Click Change Icon… and browse to the location where you have an .ico (ICO file format is an image file format for Windows icons) file you want to use.

    If you do not have an icon to use, click Browse and in File name box type: %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll
    Here you have quite a few old but good icons that you can choose from. Select one icon and click OK twice.

  3. Your shortcut is now fully customized and ready for use.

How to use Word for Blog publishing

~ Vitalie Ciobanu
  1. Start your Office Word application. It works with any version starting with Word 2007.
  2. While you’re in the new template selection view, search for “blog” in the “Search for online templates” field.

  1. “Blog post” template should be listed. Click it and then select Create button.

  2. On first run only, you’ll be asked to register your blog in Word. You can click Register Now and walk through this process or you can click Register Later and do it later by using Manage Accounts from Blog command group.

  3. If you clicked Register Now, you’ll be asked to select your blog provider. You see that this list does not include all possible blogging platforms, that’s kind of normal I’d say…, but you have the Other option and you then can add any blog details as long as you know the link to provider’s API.

    I selected WordPress because this is what I have.

  4. Next screen will ask for your blog’s URL. And, this is different from platform to platform but, for WordPress you need to provide the link to your xmlrpc.php file. It is usually in your root folder of your site but if it is in another folder, make sure to add the correct path.

    For default location, just paste your site’s address between the backslashes, thus replacing <Enter your blog URL here> with your blog’s URL.

    Add your username and password. Optionally, select Remember Password if you’re the only one who’s using your Windows account. If there are more people using same Windows account, to prevent others posting funny things to your blog, leave this option unchecked.

    Under Picture Options, you can select where your post’s pictures will be uploaded to. For simplicity, keep it as My blog provider.

  5. Once you have all fields completed, hit OK.

  6. If everything was done correctly and Word could connect to your blog, you’ll be presented with a nice confirmation message.

  8. Next, you’ll have your Word template changed to Blog. Notice Blog command group. It contains all your basic needs for creating and publishing blog posts. One thing is missing though, ability to add Tags.

    If you have a more complex blog, photography maybe or e-commerce, or if you use Featured Images or you need to add Location to your posts, probably Word is not that much suitable to you.

  9. From Insert tab, you have access to add a lot of items to your post, like images, shapes, tables etc.. As an example, below picture has Rounded Corners style added.

Below is a shape added from Word, it will be posted as a picture:

 

Just in case something went wrong and you have issues connecting to your blog or uploading images, please take a look at Microsoft’s article about this, scroll down to the bottom for troubleshoot problems.

Getting back online

~ Vitalie Ciobanu

After many years, giving this blog a rebirth.

I lost my backup files and only found very few posts and those mainly about ConfigMgr 2012. Will post them below anyway; better few than nothing.

Next planned articles will be about e-books and plain html maybe, we shall see Smile Stay tuned!

Also need to create/update “About” page. Things have happened, so to speak… jobs changed, places changed etc.