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Opening Word Doc via Browser???
I am developing a Web app that, among other things, needs to allow the user to manage a set of Word documents that resides on the web server. Does anyone know of a way to open a Word Document that resides on a WEB Server in Word via the browser and allow the user to edit the document and save it back to WEB Server exactly where it came from? If I just put a link to the document on a page, one of two things happens:
- If I am set up to have the browser use the Word Viewer, the document opens in the viewer and the user can only do a Save As but, since the browser is pulling the doc from cache, there is no indication of where the document initially came from so the user is forced to be intelligent about the location of the document.
- If I am set up to have the browser use Word, the document opens in a seperate window in Word and the user can do a Save but, again, there is no indication of where the document initially came from so the user is forced to be intelligent about the location of the document.
All I want is for the user to be able to click on a link to the document, open it, edit it and save it back to the location it came from without having to really know the physical location of the document. Users will be using IE4. I am currently using ASP pages to develop the application. Any help, sample code, ideas, etc would be appreciated.
- If I am set up to have the browser use the Word Viewer, the document opens in the viewer and the user can only do a Save As but, since the browser is pulling the doc from cache, there is no indication of where the document initially came from so the user is forced to be intelligent about the location of the document.
- If I am set up to have the browser use Word, the document opens in a seperate window in Word and the user can do a Save but, again, there is no indication of where the document initially came from so the user is forced to be intelligent about the location of the document.
All I want is for the user to be able to click on a link to the document, open it, edit it and save it back to the location it came from without having to really know the physical location of the document. Users will be using IE4. I am currently using ASP pages to develop the application. Any help, sample code, ideas, etc would be appreciated.
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Build an ActiveX control that first downloads the document to the user's machine. Second uses the local copy on data to display the word document in a Rich Text Box. Third have various controls in this control that can do the bold, font size, color, etc (whatever will be needed by the uses). Also have a save button. This Save button will know the location on the server of the word document, also the user name and password to ftp it to the server.
This idea is basically what jshamlin suggested, with some more work (on your part) to make it work the way you inteaded. One advantage of this is that if people are modifing the same document that you could use Date/Time stamps with the file to make sure someone doesn't overwright somebody's else's changes.