I am a huge fan of Dropbox. I do always try to implement the Dropbox wherever I can. If you use Windows Live Writer to edit your blog posts and also use multiple computers; managing or re-editing the huge number of saved local drafts becomes hard. It is quite good idea of synchronizing the local drafts across multiple computers for better management of your blog posts. I was trying to find out some solution of ‘how to sync Windows Live Writer Local Drafts in multiple computers’. But I did not find any such tool for syncing the saved drafts of WLW. Nevertheless, I did not stop my try and finally implemented Dropbox with Windows Live Writer to sync Windows Live Writer drafts. Here is the complete tutorial.
In Windows Live Writer, all the local drafts are saved into the folder My Weblog Posts which is located at the Documents library of the computer ( in Windows 7:- %UserProfile% > Documents > My Weblog Posts & Windows XP:- %UserProfile%My DocumentsMy Weblog Posts). Our concern is to create a folder with same name in the Dropbox and link the WLW’s saving location with that. This linking feature is available by Default in Windows 7 and we shall just use some Windows Dos commands to finish the whole workaround. But unlike Windows 7, Windows XP does not support the mapping of a folder. Nonetheless, we can still create a junction point to make our goal. Here, I’ve described the procedure in details for both Windows 7 and Windows XP.
I’ve developed two different scripts for Windows 7 and Windows XP.
For windows 7
- Click here to download the file and extract at your local Dropbox folder. The extracted one is nothing but a batch file named as wlw-drop-7.bat.
- Now run this batch file as administrator. To do so, right-click on that file and select Run as administrator.
- A user account control message box will appear. Simply, click on Yes.
Note: In the above step you could run the batch file normally by double-clicking on it. But it won’t work as some command of that batch file needs the administrative privilege.
For Windows XP
- Click here to download the package and extract to your local Dropbox folder. It contains two files: wlw-dropbox-xp.bat and junction.exe.
- Just Double click on the file wlw-dropbox-xp.bat and you are done.
Conclusion:
The above scripts are well enough to sync the local drafts of Windows Live Writer across multiple computers with Dropbox, though there is some bug with the Microsoft Windows Live Writer in this issue. After applying the above process you may not see the saved drafts in the shortcut list until you save any new draft. But accessing or editing the older drafts works fine if you open them with WLW by double-clicking on them from the My Weblog Posts directory. Nevertheless, you can open the newly saved drafts from the shortcut list of WLW as well.
Now, every draft that you save locally in Windows Live Writer will be saved in a folder that resides in the Dropbox folder which will be synced automatically between the computers with internet connection and pre-installed with Dropbox.
Let me know if you use any other method to sync your WLW drafts across your computers in comments.
Tip: Sync Microsoft Office and Google Docs.
I am having a heck of a time because I seem to be too stupid to get “Use Dropbox to Sync Windows Live Writer Local Drafts Across Computers” to implement the sharing. The batch link for W7 doesn’t seem to work. Is there anyway I can get some help from you on this. Like calling you to help me work through it.
Please give the details of your problem. This batch file was built assuming that the Dropbox is installed under My documents in Windows 7. Please leave the details of your Dropbox location. May be it needs some changes in that batch file.
Dropbox is installed under C:UsersJohnDropbox . Can I simply move it into C:UsersJohnDocuments or do I have to reinstall it. (I told you I was dumb!)
Thanks and Blessings,
John
Then reinstall it and remember to select the path to Document folder.
Hey Tanmay – Just tried this out, as I’m too a big Dropbox user – And no problems. I downloaded the file (Win7 64bit) and followed your steps without a hitch. Main thing to remember it to ‘right-click on the batch file and select ‘Run as administrator’ in the Dropbox folder on BOTH computers or laptop. It saves a lot of time and thanks a lot. Good job.
Thank you so much! It works great! I should have saved my local drafts before installing all this, because they were all lost, but no worries, they weren’t important (in that case I would already post them, haha).
I am very satisfied. I use windows xp.