Windows Live Writer – ArgumentOutOfRangeException

Although the new beta of Windows Live Writer is pretty slick it does have one horrible horrible bug that affects WordPress users.

After installing the second beta I found any attempt to open an existing post or draft from my WordPress blog would fail with a cryptic error of “ArgumentOutOfRangeException”. After a lot of trial and error I tracked the problem to several posts that used <pre></pre> tags to wrap pre-formatted text such as code snippets.

This was confirmed when I posted my findings on the Live Writer forum, though the problem isn’t just with <pre> tags. Any post containing multiple <script> or <style> tags within the body will also cause an ArgumentOutOfRangeException.

For anyone using these tags in their posts this is very much a show stopper. There’s no workaround in Windows Live Writer, and no planned fix until the next version – which could be months away.

Fortunately, there is a temporary solution.

The latest version of the Keyword Tags WordPress plugin includes an option that fixes this problem server side. When Windows Live Writer retrieves a post from your blog for editing any <pre>/<script>/<style> tags are converted into uppercase, which for some reason does not cause a problem.

This is far from ideal, but if this bug is preventing you from using Windows Live Writer with your WordPress blog then it’s the best workaround that I’m aware of!