2

I have a use case that seems pretty simple, but after Googling around I can't find a solution. I have some Word documents on an FTP server and I'd like to be able to create a link that would download them into Word and then allow the saved changes to be sent back to the FTP server.

The problem is that I can only get Word to either open the file from the FTP server as read-only and I can't save the changes back to the server automatically, or the file downloads to a temporary location which isn't automatically saved back to the server. I'm creating my link like this:

<a href="ftp://ftp.example.com/www/uploads/Image/test.doc">Test</a>

Frustratingly, if I go into Word File|Open and paste the link "ftp://ftp.example.com/www/uploads/Image/test.doc" I can save back to the server. What gives? Is there a solution? From Googling around it seems that Sharepoint offers this ability, but that's not practical for us. We're using IE7 and Office 2003.

gerdemb
  • 11,275
  • 17
  • 65
  • 73

3 Answers3

0

Read this link http://www.webdavsystem.com/server/documentation/ms_office_read_only (is actually about webdav, but I'd guess this is the same issue for FTP), there is a section on on opening weblinked documents in non-readonly mode. Which needs some changes on the client side...

HTH Tim

Tim Bailey
  • 571
  • 1
  • 3
  • 15
0

Solution for IE: Put a file on ajaxbrowser.com (this is WebDAV Server for testing) and replace file's full path in the next code:

var openDocumentsObject = new ActiveXObject("SharePoint.OpenDocuments");
openDocumentsObject.EditDocument('http://ajaxbrowser.com/mydoc.docx');

Another example:

<a href='http://ajaxbrowser.com/mydoc.docx' id='urltarget' target='_blank'>Edit through URI</a>
Taras Kozubski
  • 1,854
  • 1
  • 20
  • 33
0

I believe Microsoft Word can read / write WebDAV - see this question:

Editable Word Document from JSP

Can you set up some kind of proxy that can connect via FTP?

Community
  • 1
  • 1
  • Hmmmm... Word can also read and write to FTP servers, it just doesn't seem to work when the document is opened from a link on a web page. – gerdemb Mar 03 '09 at 14:01
  • The traditional behavior for a browser when dealing with FTP is to download to a temporary directory. If you open up via File->Open, you're using the shell's ability to open remote folders via FTP as read-write. – Yuliy Jul 12 '09 at 15:05