Editing/Saving Word document

pixerp · Post by **pixerp** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 1:35 pm

Once a Word document has been created from a template (with data merged), I'd like to be able to edit and save it back to the BO.

Currently, you only get prompted to save to the file system. Is it a limitation of your COM/DCOM implementation ?

aware_support · Post by **aware_support** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:25 pm

No, you should be able to do so. Are you talking about the configuration or the operation mode? In the configuration mode there is an Edit button that allows you to edit the template in-place.

In the operation mode there is a button that allows you to upload the new version of the document into the attribute.

pixerp · Post by **pixerp** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:54 am

I'm talking about the operation mode. Based on the Library sample.

Go to Member details, use operation New letter, Yes to Review/print the Letter.

Now, you are in a Word document where you type some additional text. When close/save your document, you get a Windows Save as... dialog.

Do you mean that I must first save my document in the file system, then in the Outgoing Letter form, use the + icon (next to the doc attribute), find my modified document in the file system and attach it ?

aware_support · Post by **aware_support** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:03 am

Yes, this is how you should do it. In the browser based system you modify documents on the CLIENT and if you want the SERVER to know about your changes you need to upload the modified document to the server.

pixerp · Post by **pixerp** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:20 am

So it means that the server opens the Word document directly i.e. passing the binary data to the browser defining the mime type, no ?

Thus when the client closes the document, it gets the Save as... dialog with a proposed filename of "reports.do.doc" and the user's default directory (My documents). Hence, the server has lost the link to the document.

Another way to do it, could be to export the document (behind the scene) to the user's temporary folder with a given name, doc99999.doc, and open that document, no ?

Now, in the Outgoing Letter form, it would be possible to import the modified document to the server WITH ONE CLICK or m I not aware of the difficulty ?

Thanks for your patience.

pixerp · Post by **pixerp** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:41 pm

With further testing, I notice that the opening/closing of Word document is different between IE6 and Firefox1.5 :

in IE, it is as described above, i.e. the document is NOT named when opening therefore you get the Save as... dialog

in Firefox, the document is named doc9999.doc, gets written in the user's temp folder. On closing, you get the Save doc9999.doc dialog (Yes-No-Cancel). If you say Yes, the doc9999.doc in temp folder gets updated. The form displayed in the BS is the autogenerated "Please click here to see the document" + Back button. If I click Here again, the original (from template) document will open up in WOrd with name doc9999-1.doc

So really, I don't know who is doing what in that case. But I need to have a solution (replace MS Word with OpenOffice or an HTML editor or whatever).

Thanks in advance for any proposal.

Elmar · Post by **Elmar** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:43 pm

>...or m I not aware of the difficulty ?

Browser access to the users file system is very limited.
I don´t know of a legal way to gain unasked access to the clients machine´s file system. As this is a client side - comparable to an Word-Attachment in an Outlook E-Mail Inbox - operation you would probably need to use Mirocsoft JScript - Javascript Active X in IE- to access the file system because Javascript´s access to the filesystem is prohibited for obvious security reasons.

Also note that Word is not aware of opening a document 'that was downloaded from the web'. You could code a plugin for Word that handels document interaction by utilizing webservices, though.

regards,
Elmar