---
title: "Utility: Launch Windows Live Writer with Spelling Enabled"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/3/utility-launch-windows-live-writer-with-spelling-enabled.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/3/utility-launch-windows-live-writer-with-spelling-enabled.html"
published: "2007-06-03T12:30:43"
updated: "2007-06-03T12:30:43"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Windows Live Writer with Spelling Launcher can be downloaded here (13k). I too, like Oren, found that my spell checker was not working with Windows Live writer, simply because my system was not configured to use the…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Utility: Launch Windows Live Writer with Spelling Enabled

By Roy Osherove June 3, 2007

**Historical article** · Originally published June 3, 2007; technical details may be outdated.

Windows Live Writer with Spelling Launcher can be [downloaded here](http://files.osherove.com/downloads/WLWLauncher.zip) (13k).

I too, like Oren, found that my spell checker was not working with Windows Live writer, simply because my system was not configured to use the en-US culture. [Alex](http://www.buayacorp.com/) posted [some code on Oren's blog comments](http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/06/02/9380.aspx#16033) to enable launching Live Writer Beta 2 with spelling enables by launching it from an AppDomain that has an en-US thread culture.

it worked, and I simply created a very simple console mode launcher that :

- detects the system special folder called Program files
- attaches "\\Windows Live Writer\\WindowsLiveWriter.exe" to the end
- launches it with the correct culture.

**How to use:**

Simply unzip and run this from anywhere on your machine. It should just work.

Thanks [Alex](http://www.buayacorp.com/)!

_\[let's hope_ _Microsoft won't [pull a Jamie](http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2007/05/31/microsoft-vs-testdriven-net-31-may-2007.aspx) on me__!\]_

_PS, I changed the code a bit to look like this:_

```
string progs = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFiles);
string exe = progs + @"\Windows Live Writer\WindowsLiveWriter.exe";
```

Another annoying thing about the recent beta of WLW: When you get an existing post to edit it, it wipes out the categories that you previously associated with it (I think it just neglects to "get" the categories as it retrieves the existing post item from the blog). Beware! When re-publishing an item, make sure to re-set the categories on the blog post.


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/