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Print Your Blog To Paper

It's a very good idea to backup your blog, periodically.

Making a mirror copy of the blog, on a local computer that you control, is a good idea for many reasons.

You also might like to make a printed copy of the blog. If you would simply like to print off your blog to paper, to save the text of the posts, here is code that will let you extract a selection of updates.


This code lets you retrieve blog posts content, in sequence.

http://yourblog.blogspot.com/search?
updated-min=1999-01-01T00:00:00Z&
updated-max=2008-01-01T23:59:59:00Z&
max-results=5000

Simply

  • Copy the code into a text word processor such as Notepad.
  • Replace
    • yourblog.blogspot.com - The blog URL.
    • 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z - The start date and time.
    • 2008-01-01T23:59:59:00Z - The end date and time.
    with the appropriate values, to suit your needs.
  • Remove gratuitous line breaks, from the code, so it all forms one single long line.
  • Copy and paste the entire line, as a URL, into the address window in your browser.
  • When the proper display is seen in the browser, use the browser print wizard to print as you wish.

After you've done this a few times, and suffered the truncated horizontal content, and orphaned vertical content, you'll understand why Adobe Acrobat and similar formatting programs are so expensive - and yet so popular. Your browser will do only so good a job reformatting the content of the blog, horizontally and vertically, when printed.

But use Print Preview, and try the many alternative print formatting services.


I'll note here that Blog2Print is the currently popular solution - and Blog2Print, along with various other third party services, may be affected by the ClientLogin upgrade, from 2015. If your blog is private, you may need to make it public, temporarily - so Blog2Print can read its posts..

Comments

... said…
Thanks Chuck...I am going to keep this link handy...for me and for those asking.
The Yost Family said…
Thanks for this info. I haven't tried it yet, but I've been trying to print individual entries as I go to save but the problem is that sometimes the text doesn't show up with photos. It's kind of random when it works and when it doesn't. Do you know how to fix that problem? It looks fine on the print preview...
Thanks in advance!
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Yosts,

I haven't noticed a problem with printing blogs with photos. What's your blog URL?
Tamara & Rob said…
Chuck,
(Hoping you're still out there). Where do I enter the syntax in the first place? Unfortunately I don't know HTML. I do my blog via a pre-formatted feature on blogspot. Like other moms, I want to print off my entries to keep a diary/journal. Please help if you can.

Tamara
Nitecruzr said…
Tamara,

Simply replace

* yourblog.blogspot.com
* 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z
* 2008-01-01T23:59:59:00Z

with the appropriate values, to extract all updates for a selected time period. And, need I point it out again, remove gratuitous line breaks, from the code above. Then copy and paste the entire line, as a URL, into the address window in your browser.

I'm not sure how I can explain it any further.
Tamara & Rob said…
Chuck,
My apologies. I didn't read your original posting thoroughly. I went back and posted your code in the URL, substituting the blog address and dates, and it worked, minus one problem. Many of the photos were cut off on the right side. All the text appeared (even when it hit the right margin), but some photos did not. I couldn't really determine a rhyme or reason for it. If you want to check it out, I'm at www.robandtamara.blogspot.com.

Thanks for your help,
Tamara
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Tamara,

Well, to tell the truth, I did a small bit of reformatting based upon your previous comment. It's slightly easier to understand now. Thanks for the feedback.

The horizontal and vertical truncation and other effects will be something that you may have to live with - your browser can do only so much in formatting a continuous display of uncertain height and width. There's a reason why Adobe Acrobat, and similar products, are so expensive and yet so popular.
Chuck thanks for this. Any idea how to make the comments show too?
bmw said…
Does this still work? I tried in Firefox 3.6.10 late september 2010, and any dates I enter just gives me the latest month of blog-entries, and printing gived barely one - just as if attempting to print from the blog directly...
- bmw
david_dvdson said…
hey chuck, this link is really helpful. ive been having a lot of printing problems lately and you definitely helped me.
Unknown said…
Thanks for explaining how to print my posts. I appreciate it!
shamraiz said…
Perfect look! Combined together in a perfect way, love that mix of patterns and styles,
Barodast said…
turns blog can also directly print yes without having much to be edited

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