I have a requirement for within an ASP.Net application to open a Word template from within the browser and pass in some parameters to a MS Word plugin that will be installed on the client.
Is it possible when opening Word from the browser to pass in any parameters and if so how do you go about this?
You cannot launch an application from the browser. You can cause an application to run by downloading a document for which the application is the startup application. I do not believe you can supply parameters in that case.
You can use DSOFile to edit word document properties on the server very efficiently and the client-side plugin can read the parameters using the word object model. This applies to *.doc files. I'm not sure what the exact equivalent is with *.docx.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224351
Related
I am not a coder but need a task done.
We have a website that builds a word doc file using ckeditor based on answers from clients.
This documents needs afterwards to be formatted (TA/TC functions of word) which cannot be done with ckeditor.
Therefore we have a VBA/ macro that needs to be run in MS word after the doc file is generated.
I want to automate this step and have the VBA/macro run, before the doc is send to client.
So from my understanding, you have to take the CKeditor doc, run the macro on the server, and store it in the current database..
Possible or not?
This should not be done server-side. Working with Office applications server-side is not supported - Office applications are end-user applications. They can easily appear to "hang" when used, due to waiting for user input.
More information about using Office on a server can be found here
Possible: theoretically, yes, but impossible for anyone to guarantee as the code and document content are unknown. But, theoretically, if it works on a desktop it can work when run on a server.
The more "correct" way to manipulate Office documents on a server is to work directly with the Office Open XML files, instead of opening them in the application interface. The file formats were designed for this scenario and execution is also much faster. I'm guessing, however, since TC and TA fields are mentioned that the macro also builds TOCs? If yes, then the document would also have to be opened in order to generate the TOC (update the field). Server-side, that would mean using Word Automation Services, which is part of SharePoint.
Our company recently joined a larger company that utilizes Bit9 for application whitelisting. Previously, we had a large amount of users using Harmon.IE to interface with our Sharepoint-based document management system. I'm trying to figure out what to allow in Bit9 to allow the document open process to work in the Harmon.IE outlook add-in.
What's happening is the user tries to open a file from the Harmon.IE pane and Bit9 blocks the auto-generated, randomly-named vbs file used to launch the file from Sharepoint. Since this file is different each time and has a different hash, we can't simply approve the vbs file.
We also can't set wscript as a trusted source as many malware sources utilize wscript. Likewise, can't really allow anything that comes out of Outlook as that would open the door for malware delivery via email.
I'm trying to find out if there's a dll that I can trust somewhere in the stack that will allow these VBS files to be trusted and allowed to run.
Add OpenFilesUsingScript key with default value "False"- harmon.ie will launch files directly without using VB script
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mainsoft\Prefs\OpenFilesUsingScript]
#="False"
A custom rule with an action of Execute Allow on the path of the VBS with the name wild carded as deep as possible should cover you just fine.
I'm making a web app. Part of it includes the automatic generation of word documents (letters). Those documents need to be opened by the end user, then saved back to the server once they've finished editing.
I tried using webdav for this but the only browser I could actually launch word from (using active-x) was IE. I also found a plugin for firefox, but for Chrome I couldn't find a way that worked.
Next I thought about making the clients map a drive to webdav (or similar), then offering up the files as file://... links, but that only works if the webpage is on the local machine.
Before I resort to ditching word (the clients won't like this) and using CKEditor or TinyMCE, is there another way?
In short, I'd like to have links to a document on the page, which when clicked are opened in word, but the file should stay remote - and then when saving, it's the remote file that gets updated.
I've also looked at Zoho but it could be very expensive for this project, plus I don't think it can be white-labelled and also looks a bit old fashioned, UI wise.
Maybe Sharepoint can do what I need? Haven't looked at that much. Also thought of making a client app to run in the system tray and deal with things.
If there was a decent way of editing Word docs from within the browser with something like CKEditor/TinyMCE and once finished, conversion back to Word format actually worked 100%, that would suffice.
I'm open to totally fresh ideas if anyone has any...
Currently Chrome, Firefox and Safari support MS Office plugin. They can open and save documents directly to server. I have tested this with MS Office 2007 and MS Office 2007 just about a month ago.
Ideally, your users would be able to use Word natively. Is there any chance you could create an Office Add-In that hooks into the BeforeDocumentSave event, looks for some indicator that the file is associated with your application, and save the updated file to your server?
Saving to the server via the Word Add-In would probably need to include some unique identifier (in addition to file name), so you could overwrite the previous version server-side. Then, if you were using something like SignalR, you could trigger a refresh on the web page when the file was saved successfully (assuming they were still on that web page) on the server (via FileSystemWatcher).
Had same problem myself.
I solved it by setting up a webdav share on the server with digest authentication (SabreDAV), and tied it into the users table on my app backend.
In relation to the client end, I solved accessing this by creating a small java applet which uses the java Desktop class (getDesktop().open()) to open the file. You will need to make sure the path is handled right for the client machine type (Windows, OS X or Linux)
You will also need to get your end users to permanently mount or map the webdav share locally.
We have a Qt app that when it starts tries to connect to a servlet to get config parameters that it needs to keep running.
The URL may change frequently because we have to test the application in several environments. Right now (as a temporary solution) the URL is a constant in source code, but it is a little bit ugly.
Where is the best place to mainting this URL, so that we do not need to change the source code every time I want to change the environment target?
In a database table maybe (my application uses a SQLite DB), in a settings file, or in some other way?
Thank you for you replies.
You have a number of options:
Hard coded (like you have already)
Run-time user input
Command line arguments
QSettings
Read from a bespoke file as text.
I would think option 3 would be the most simple to implement without being intrusive, but it does depend on what kind of application you have.
I would keep the list of url in a document, e.g. a XML, stored in a central, well known place, e.g. a known web server, and hardcode the url of the known place in the app.
The list could then be edited externally without recompiling your app;
The app would at startup download and parse the list, pointing to the right servlet based upon an environment specified as a command line parameter.
I checked in the API, that writing a file is only in Flex Air.
Despite of that, is there still a way in Flex to write a file on the server or on the client machine ?
More concretely, it's because I have a String and I will decode it by mx.utils.Base64Decoder
to a doc. And I need to open it by Word directly on the client side, or write it on the server and return the link to the client for downloading.
Thanks
I'm doing something similar - I have built a custom grid in Flex that contains an additional button on it that allows the user to open the data up in Excel. I've done this by writing a function in PHP on the server which my Flex speaks to. This creates the CSV file on the server and the function passes the link back to the client, which in turn offers the user the chance to open the data up in Excel.
I'm using the Zend technologies to accomplish this - I recommend you take a look; they're extremely good. I used to use Flex Data Services and Java do do this but just recently switched to PHP because development time is cut down drastically as a result.
Hope this helps.
Jamie.
AIR applications run on the users' desktops. They allow you to write to the users' desktops. Nothing stops Flex/AIR applications from communicating to the server, write some files there (using a suitable backend technology) and return a link back to the user.