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br_ms

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View DOC and XLS in the browser Internet Explorer

Good afternoon,

I've been through this, seek help to solve the following problem:

Development Environment: ASP / ASP.NET
Browser: Internet Explorer
Occurrence:

1 - View Word documents and Excel spreadsheet 2003 and 2007 (.doc / .docx and .xls / xlsx) in the Browser, these documents are in a shared directory on the NET.

2 - Depending on the level of access the user who is viewing it can print the document.

3 - Depending on the level of access the user who is viewing it may also make changes in the document and SAVED.

Note: No way, the user can save this document on the local computer, any change must be made in the original document located in a folder on the network. Access to this document can only be done through the web application.

We are currently studying the possibility of using a component (this component, we solve the 1st and 2nd item, but the 3 - Edit and save, I'm having trouble) provided by Aspose (Aspose Words):

http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.words-for-.net/default.aspx

That is paid, but if we could solve this problem without using this, it would be great.

Thanks,
Alcides Ribeiro Junior
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dave4dl

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br_ms

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Dave4dl, using sharepoint would certainly be the best solution, however, the client already has a system developed in ASP.NET for managing documents, in fact, these implementations that I was asked would be just to build a module that is possible to view documents WORD, Excel spreadsheets, edit them and print when needed, all through the browser. Do you know any component to carry out these tasks? Can be either to ASP.NET or Silverlight.

Thanks,
Alcides Ribeiro Junior
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ASKER

Can anyone help me? please.
I think any web server that supports the PUT http command would let you save files (you would have to have the full version of Word and Excel on the client machines).
although after reading the following post:
http://help.lockergnome.com/office/Problem-save-Word-Document-Server--ftopict617111.html

It is clear that you cannot save directly to a web server (without sharepoint).
You could write a system that has some of the functionality you are looking for:

You could write a service that runs on the client machines that scans your temporary file locations for any .doc or .docx files (unfortunately you cannot set the temp location in Word: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080416015928AAjUuqp so you have to scan all the temp folders).  If it found a .doc (or .docx) it would see if the create date and modified date are different.  If they were different, it would copy the file into a file share that points to the web server where the hosted file is stored.  It would record that it had uploaded the file at a particular time and then not upload that same file again until the modified time was after that last upload time.

This would be some of what you need but a huge problem with it is that you have no versioning or locking (so multiple people could run over each other).  You could create something that somewhat solves this problem if you inserted a version control system like Subversion into this system.  This would work by having your client service commit to your subversion codebase and another service running on the web server (or elsewhere) that continually updated the file hosted on the web server with the latest version of the file in the codebase.

There are a lot of potential problems in this process (starting with the fact that the users will be responsible for saving the file with the correct name) but it seems to be about the best you can do with the restrictions you are facing.
I just realized that you actually never say that the file is hosted on a web server.  This could work if you open the file from a Windows share (althought the step of using a web browser is completely unnecessary and only would add complication).  If you goal in using the web browser is to avoid the need for licenses for non-free versions of Word and Excel, I think you might be out of luck, MS does a pretty good job of making sure there are no legal ways to get their products' Save functionality without buying it.
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Thx