Use the Word to WordPress Import Function to Power Up Your Posts

Write your posts in Microsoft Word and then automatically import them into your WordPress site as a draft or published post under the appropriate category.

WordPressThis technique allows you to import into your free WordPress.com site.

If you don’t use the free WordPress site and host your own WordPress site, this is a two-step process but very worthwhile.

  • Just copy and paste the content from the WordPress.com post editor box into your hosted WordPress site draft post.

Keep all of your formatting, from headers to bold and all links – and images (if you are happy to have them called from your free WordPress site) – just as they appear in Word.

  • If you prefer the peace of mind that comes with hosting images on your own server – simply swap out the images once your have saved the draft on your hosted site.

Benefits of Using the Word to WordPress Import Function

Reduce your stress

Use the Word to WordPress import function to save yourself time and headaches.

  • Stop battling with the text and Word clipboards in WordPress.
  • Stop wearing out the scroll button to review your content and format your text.
  • Say goodbye to thousands of characters of unnecessary characters and formatting errors that destroy your blog’s format.

More time to write more posts

You are probably more familiar with Word to type and format content. Creating a post in the default WordPress text editor container has the following drawbacks:

  • you are limited to how much content you can see at any one time
  • you need to scroll up and down to style text, define headers and add hyperlinks. If you want to do more than one thing to a word or phrase you often have to scroll up and down several times
  • you do not know how a paragraph will appear in your content column until you save it and preview it – especially if adding an image to the left or right of the paragraph
  • frequent saves sometimes ‘jam up’ WordPress or your computer and the problems start there…

Better Quality Articles

Create your articles in Word and enjoy the following benefits:

  • By changing the margins to the same width as your content column you can see exactly how your paragraph will appear.
  • By typing in a large screen, you have more ‘room to think‘. You can view what you have written previously and can move text around, insert words and make changes easily without being confined to a small viewing area.
  • Write for a topic rather than a post and create multiple posts at once. Keep writing about something until your mind is empty or you are satisfied. Then, break it into chunks with realistic breaks to create multiple articles. Schedule parts for the future (e.g. one a week).
  • Write quality articles and don’t ‘lose your work’. When you are typing in the default WordPress text editor container, you are probably only thinking about the individual post you are writing.
    • If you are typing in Word you can chunk it into different articles easily.
    • If you are typing in WordPress and copying and pasting into separate draft articles (with multiple browser tabs open) there is a good chance you will crash your browser (e.g. run time error or unexplained shutdown), WordPress will jam up and you won’t be able to save your changes or you will stuff up some other way (make major mistakes).

Get Yourself A Free WordPress.com Account

If you don’t yet have a free WordPress account, go to WordPress.com and hit the Sign Up Now button.

Enter a few details and within seconds you will be the owner of your own free WordPress blog.

Once you have a WordPress.com account:

Step 1:

Open Word, create a document with content for an article and save it as a Word 97-2003 document.

Step 2:

Click on the colourful Office button in the top left-hand corner and select ‘Publish’.

Publish with Word

Step 3:

Enter your WordPress.com account details. You’ll only have to do this once, unless you have multiple WordPress sites.

Step 4:

You will notice that your menu options have changed and you will have a tab called ‘Blog Post’. Make sure you have formatted your text using the default Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc options. The import will translate your formatting into your blog defaults.

  • Select ‘Publish’ and select ‘Publish as Draft’. You will get a message very quickly stating it was published with a date and time stamp.

Step 5:

Go to your free WordPress site and open up the draft post you created. Make any changes and publish. Repeat as necessary.

If you have a hosted WordPress site, login to your hosted site in another tab and create a draft post with a title. Copy and paste from one to the other.

  • I recommend you just delete the free site’s content once you have successfully posted to your master site.
  • No-one ever saw the draft and is none the wiser that you use this sneaky technique.
  • Alternatively, you can just rewrite it or rewrite the introductory paragraphs and link to your main site to give yourself an extra incoming link and to get your free site indexed for your targeted keywords.

{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }

Bob Weisenberg April 15, 2010

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve been struggling with copying text in to Wordpress from outside sources for months now, and finally you’ve provided me with a comprehensive solution.

You didn’t mention, I don’t think, but this tool works great for copying in text from non-Word sources, too. I did a complex document that did all sorts of weird things when copied into Wordpress. I couldn’t figure it out, so I was about to painstakingly manually strip out all the extraneous formating in the Wordpress HTML setting.

No need now. I just copied the text (it was in a pdf version of an online book), copied it directly into the Word blog tool above, then cut and pasted that into the Visual mode of Wordpress. Result–nice clean Wordpress text.

Suggest you put a date on these articles so we can see how current they are.

Bob Weisenberg
.-= Bob Weisenberg´s last blog ..Steve Jobs Sought Enlightenment in India After Dropping Out of College =-.

Reply

Somone Bull April 15, 2010

Great that I could assist Bob. I’ve added the dates below the headline on posts now.

Reply

wade419 April 18, 2010

I had been doing exactly this and was very pleased – but now I’m moving to a Mac and realizing that the process is not the same in the Mac version of Word (2008). Do you have any experience with this, or any advice on where I could look elsewhere? If this functionality doesn’t even exist in Mac’s Word, do you have any suggestions for third party software that might provide this same formatting ability? (I like to heavily format my blog posts)

Reply

Somone Bull April 18, 2010

No sorry, I don’t have a Mac.

I use the Scribe SEO plugin that lets you create or copy and paste into its online version and it also provides the html version when you run a report. You could then copy and paste into a text editor and then into the WordPress text editor. This would be several steps (1) create in Mac, (2) copy and paste into the Scribe SEO, (3) copy and paste into a text editor (the html) and then (4) copy and paste into the text editor of WordPress. However, if you have ever had problems with the WP text editor including having to create brand new posts or start from scratch.

I’m sure there are other free solutions out there. Perhaps a fellow Mac user in a WordPress forum knows some tricks.

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Tom November 19, 2010

I just saw your article on word to wordpress. I’ve got Office 2010. How do I publish to draft? The colorful button is gone.

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Somone Bull November 20, 2010

Sorry, can’t help you with that one. I’m still running Vista. You may have to use your inbuilt help menu.

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Matt January 13, 2011

In Office 2010 select the File tab and “Save & Send”. Under the Save & Send area there is a “Publish to Blog Post” option.

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matt December 30, 2010

to answers toms questions click on the microsoft symbol on the top left hand side and then scroll down the bottom of the menu to publish.
follow the steps and there you go

Reply

Somone Bull December 30, 2010

Thanks Matt.

Reply

Tom January 15, 2011

For some reason Word could not publish my post. I’m using Word Press so I listed that as my blog provider but I’m not sure that’s right. When I put other, the only choice on API is MetaWebLog. No ideas what that is. Also, I’d like to make a web page, not a blog page. Any way to do that?

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Somone Bull January 17, 2011

It only works for the free WordPress blog. You then have to copy and paste the html view into your blog post (or page to make a web page) on your self-hosted site. You will also have to upload the images into your final post/page on your self-hosted WP blog. It may sound like a lot of hassle but for some people it is very worthwhile to keep formatting and not jam up your browser, cache, WP auto-save, etc. The longer you keep your WP editor open the more CPU usage on your server (which can make a difference if you do not have sufficient size).

Reply

Mahabub October 1, 2011

thanks for ur great post. thanks or sharing us

Reply

Trader Jack October 12, 2011

I want to Thank you for your writing this article. It has helped me with my blogging and has saved me a lot of time that is for sure! So how did you find this out by the way? Sharing this is very nice. I am a newbie and my website is the first one I have ever made on my own. How is my site? I used a hosting company recommended by Wordpress so plugins are available. Does it have enough images in balance to text?
Is there enough pages to keep a visitor interested on the web site? It seems like there is always something to do on your website for changes. Please share your thoughts as I always want to improve in any way! http://www.traderjackproducts.com

Thanks a bunch! Have a great day everybody!

Trader Jack

Reply

Somone Bull October 13, 2011

You definitely need to find a better repeating background tile – and not everybody is lured by the US dollar. The hard edges on the repeating tile is too hard on the eyes.

Reply

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