The 9th of december last year (announcements on Scott Hanselman blog and the .NET foundation), Windows Live Writer became Open Live Writer and at the same time became open source through the .NET Foundation. For different licensing and complexity hurdles, several features were removed, and, for the time being, the team is focusing on Windows 10, but it works under Windows 8 for me without problems.

What a good job they did !

That said, as I am working on several computers and actively using OneDrive, I was used to have the local draft folder on OneDrive too. Thus, I was wondering if it was possible to use the same trick as WLW 2012, and adding the PostsDirectory key in the registry in order to set the draft folder.

For Windows Live Writer 2012, the PostsDirectory registry key was under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Writer .

But, first because it is no longer Microsoft providing this very useful tool and also because it is no longer par of the Live Essentials suite, the registry key had to be added in another location.

Simple things are always the most efficient, there is no need to try long time or search for hours where to add the key, it is simply under HKCU\Software\OpenLiveWriter . Then, restart OLW, if needed, in order to reload the new value of the parameter, and the drafts will be saved in that new location.

Oh, maybe one important thing : if you get your OneDrive files from another computer through OD synchronization, make your drafts “Available Offline???. Indeed, for me, OLW was not able to see the drafts until I made them available locally.