I have looked for a solution to this but all I have found are products that are close but not what I need.
We have a program that creates a word document on the fly based on data from our database, and stores it on our server, then the user can download this file to print,email,file away.
I need something that will allow the user to open the existing document from the server, edit it, and save it back to the server.
I need this to be able to work on all browser, so activex isn't a full solution.
This link is a proof of concept of using CKEditor to do what you describe.
The focus is on ensuring that the "long tail" of possible docx content is preserved across the editing process.
For example, take a look at the Microsoft demo docx, which they use to compare their web apps with Google Docs, at
google-documents-vs-word-web-app
Related
I'm trying to develop word add-in which allows to modify word content. One of the requirement is to select some text and mark it:
change its style (look) - and that is done
Associate that piece of text with some custom/hidden data, ex. an ID.
I want to somehow persist that data within the document, so that:
My add-in can read the document on the start and build a list of 'marked' elements
It should work on different machines - I can create a document on one machine, later open in on other machine, and add-in should be able to retrieve that data.
So far I tried to persist that data by first, getting data as HTML, and add attributes to tags, but that didn't work.
Also tried to add some hidden div, but it was only available during word app lifetime.
Recently, found this link: https://github.com/OfficeDev/Excel-Add-in-JavaScript-PersistCustomSettings , but still it allows to persist data in scope of "browser", so, I assume that on other machine it won't work.
What are my possibilities? Maybe I shouldn't store it within a document, but if not, where?
Developing it using office-js - it should work for both Word 2013 and Word 2016 (so I don't have an access to Word 2016 specific API).
Check out https://dev.office.com/reference/add-ins/shared/settings
The Office JS Settings object allows you to save custom data that persists with the document. It is pretty straight-forward to use. Getting settings is synchronous - saving settings is async. The biggest thing is that you have to remember to call Office.settings.saveAsync() after you have made your changes using Office.settings.set() in order to actually save the changes to the document.
Moreover to Nick's answer which is absolutely correct, you can use "Binding" mechanism.
Bindings are stored in document out-of-the-box, so that, you can access those later at any time.
An example, which fits my needs:
Select some text and click on button in add-in (to call some method)
Call addFromSelectionAsync() method (you can specify an id for it to reference it later)
Access it using getAllAsync() or getByIdAsync() method at any time you need it.
More about it: https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/develop/bind-to-regions-in-a-document-or-spreadsheet
We have an existing web application written in Java. We want to give our users the ability to open a Word document that is stored in our application on the server. So when the user downloads the document from our server, Word pops up and they then can edit this document on the client. Once finished editing the document we would like to give them the ability to save this document automatically back to the server where they retrieved it, by simply selecting on the Word Save icon. Similar to how SharePoint does it.
Seems to me SharePoint would be a good solution for this and they do it very well, but unfortunately we cannot use SharePoint in our architecture.
There also seems to be a lot of server-side possibilities that we can use to upload and open word documents from our server, I feel we can solve these use cases easily.
My big problem is the automatic saving of an edited document by the client back to our server where the document was downloaded
I am not Microsoft proficient to know what the best solution would be.
Should we write a Word AddIn to save to our server?
How do we get the Word AddIn into our users desktops?
Can we embed a Word AddIn into the Word document that is opened on the client?
1.Should we write a Word AddIn to save to our server?
If you don't want to use SharePoint you can develop an add-in where you can implement all the required functionality and much more.
2.How do we get the Word AddIn into our users desktops?
You can develop an installer for the add-in. See Deploying an Office Solution for more information. Also you can use the group policy objects for deploying the software automatically.
3.Can we embed a Word AddIn into the Word document that is opened on the client?
You can develop a document-level add-in, i.e. the code will be run for a specific document only. But you will need to install it as an application level add-in. See Architecture of Document-Level Customizations for more information.
Making a word document of our network set-up.
We have about 7 servers and I need to include screenshots and other info on each.
Is it possible to have a pic of the server that when clicked will open up another word doc that reveals all of the other info. Can this then be mailed to someone easily?
I think that you should have actually tried to do it in Word before asking. The answer is trivial. For completeness sake:
Right-click on the image, choose "Hyperlink..." from the menu. Select the document you want from the resulting standard file selection dialog.
That's it. Doing ctrl-click on the pickture will open up the document selected though you will probably get a security warning first.
You can also do it from a VBA macro. First select the desired image and then:
ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Selection.Range, Address:= _
"C:\Users\me\Documents\a-document.doc", SubAddress:=""
So you could automate the process of server discovery (or maybe you have the data in a spreadsheet that you could use), adding images and hyperlinks automatically. Probably not worth it for just 7 servers.
I'm not clear what you mean by the last part about emailing. Do you want to email the Master word document or the one opened after clicking on the hyperlink? Either way, Word has a menu option for doing this.
If you are wanting to send the document that is opened from the hyperlink - do you actually need the user to open that document or would you rather email it directly? A simple macro can be written that will ask you for the target email address and send the document directly without having to open it. There are really too many possibilities to write down here - we need more information.
I have a section of a web application I’m working on where there are mail merge templates. The documents are word documents. When a user has need to edit the template I’d like them to be able to simply click edit, which would cause word to load with the document loaded. When the user is done, they click save in word and the web page spots the change in the file and pushes this back to the server.
I managed to create a VBScript in a web page that could do all of this, but only when internet explorers security was turned down. The fact that I’m using VBScript to automate is not good as it restricts the browser choice and I’m not happy asking my users to turn their security down.
I don’t want the users to download the file, edit it, save it to their local machine and then upload it back to the server, it’s all very clunky. I also know that there are 3rd party controls that allow editing in a page, but I'd rather avoid them if I can.
Is there an alternative way of approaching this?
You can use Office Open XML to generate the word documents on the Server Side. There is an msdn article, sorry no time to go searching for it, explaining why you should not automate office from web servers using COM/DCOM because of security issues involving shared memory.
you could use google docs API, which is certainly more universal than using proprietary technology that works in one and only browser (IE).
I think you can go for the google docs API. It is more generic solution to go for too.
It is possible, with browser-security caveats, to open Word documents for edit from a browser via an UNC path on an internal network.
The best option currently is to WebDAV enable your website, and use the SharePoint plug-in client-side to open the file in Word over WebDAV.
The SharePoint plug-in for IE gets installed when you install Office. There is also a plug-in for Firefox/ Chrome referred to as NPAPI. Beware NPAPI seems to have an issue with long URL paths.
IT Hit make a terrific framework for WebDAV enabling a .NET-based website, see http://www.webdavsystem.com/. They also sell a client-side library that can open Word documents via Java instead of the plug-ins mentioned above. IIS has it own, more basic, WebDAV capability that you can use too.
I am not familiar with non-.Net / Apache solutions but just search for WebDAV products.
Office will require the use of HTTPS for editing via WebDAV.
I am planning to implement a small in-house document management system. It must have a web GUI for managing a remote folder structure stored in a database. In these folders are word documents stored (physically as blob in a database). Whenever a user clicks on a document link, a word binary is downloaded via browser and (hopefully) opened in Word on the user's PC.
This is the easy part ;)
Now the user hits "Save" or Ctrl-S. I want to have a functionality programmed inside Word that calls a custom function (maybe in a .NET DLL) that uploads the saved file back to the server (HTTP). The hard part seems to me:
How to intercept the Save process to call the extension functionality
How to deploy this to multiple users
Mike's link to the question I answered should do it for intercepting the file save. The specific button idMso for File->Save is "FileSave"
To deploy it to several users machine you can either
Create a setup project that will create an msi that you can run on all the users machines
if it's an intranet scenario, you can keep the assemblies on a network location and just add the neceassary registry settings to all the users machines. This article should describe the settings that you need to include. You would just need to change the path setting to point to the network location.
AFAIK, this is what Alfresco is doing with its Microsoft Office Add-ins (never tested myself though). As Alfresco is open-source, it must be possible to look at what they are doing. Or just ask your questions on Alfresco's forums.
You can try to override "save" from the ribbon or build your own ribbon tab with the behavior you want. It may be trickier overriding "Ctrl-S".
Overriding the ribbon: StackOverflow Question
Video on altering a standard ribbon button: Office Developer Center