Is it possible to open an excel file in its curren

Question

I am writing a small web site for a company Intranet and have the following question that may be simple. Is it possible to open an Excel file from it's current location on the network instead of downloading it. So that any changes made are made to the actual file and not a downloaded version of it?

Thanks

Matt

Answer 1

Anything you open from a HTTP connection I believe is "downloaded" to the client. Its more how you "uploade" the changes.

But if thats what the customer wants I have some alternatives:

1) Use Dropbox or similar filesharing utils. Once someone saves a document in Dropbox, its automatically uploaded to the Dropbox account. The free version allows up to 2 GB of data. Thats quite a few Excel files.

2) Use Gmail/Google Apps. If you do you get 1 GB space for online documents. You can upload Office files suchs as Excel and they will be converted an online editable from within the Google Docs. You can share the files within the domain or even externally if you make that setting the admin part. Afterwards you can also download/export the Spreadsheet as Excel format. I havent tested how much of the standards you loose but ofcause its not a full Excel.

3) wait for Microsoft to finish their Office online. I bet that Excel version will do exactly what you are currently asking for by using some special plugin or MSIE9 technics. But I dont really know yet.

Hope some of this gave you some ideas?

Answer 2

Yes, it's possible, but then you would have to specify the address of the file in the local network, not as an HTTP address on the web server.

The user would naturally need to have access to the file on the network share, with write permission.

Answer 3

If the file is in a network share on the same domain (or reachable from the domain your app is running from), it is possible, provided that

1. The share is readable and writeable by the domain\user the app runs under (via ownership or assigned role.)
2. The file is shareable (IIRC). This is important if multiple users (or apps) need to access it.

Other than that, a \domain\location path should be treatable just like a local (or disk mounted) path.

Answer 4

In your HTML document, create/place a link:

<a href='file:///H:/docs/foo/bar.xls'>Your Excel File</a>

Substitite your network UNC path for H:/docs/foo/bar.xls. Note the slashes instead of the regular UNC backslashes.

Answer 5

No. It is not possible to open a remote excel file across HTTP and write changes back to it.

Let's consider some other things you might be trying to do.

If you are running excel, all you can open are files visible to the file system APIs. That means files on your local disk and network file systems accessible via CIFS. Mapped drive letters, \\ pathnames, that sort of thing.

If you set up an Excel file for download from a web server, it will always be downloaded. Excel won't open it 'in place'.

The Microsoft technology solution that addresses what you seem to be asking for is Sharepoint.