Title: Editing Microsoft Office Files from Windows with IE
If you are using Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows, and you have the appropriate Microsoft Office application installed on your system, your server administrator may have configured one or both of the following interfaces to allow you to edit some of these documents in those applications directly over the WebDAV connection to your TeamPage server. With either of the direct editing methods, opening a document directly in Microsoft Office may require you to provide your TeamPage login credentials.
Note: Due to changes that Microsoft made to the WebDAV support starting with IE8 and Windows 7, these features may require that your TeamPage server run on HTTPS (rather than HTTP) and that there is no reverse proxy server in front of your TeamPage Server.
Supported File Types: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel
On Windows, applications must have built-in support for WebDAV in order to allow direct editing. Any application written with this support should open for direct editing when launched from a Web Folder view, as described below. However, the Easy Edit feature, also described below, applies only to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. Support for additional applications may be added over time.
On Windows, files from applications without built-in WebDAV support cannot be edited directly over the WebDAV connection to your TeamPage server. They must be manually replaced. Please see Using Document Share Folders for information on replacing a WebDAV file that is not version controlled; and please see Checkout Checkin to learn how to manually create a new version of a version controlled file.
Warning: Generally, double-clicking a file that does not have application support for WebDAV will open the file in Internet Explorer. If it is a text or HTML file, it will be displayed. Otherwise, it may be downloaded to a temporary location and launched. Beware: if you edit and save the file in the temporary location, the file will not be updated on the Traction server. For this reason, we recommend that you always check the location where the file is stored; in office applications this is normally displayed prominently in a location bar.
How to Directly Edit a File over a WebDAV Connection
The Easy Edit button allows Windows Internet Explorer users to open a file on a TeamPage server directly over a WebDAV connection for editing. (It does this by launching the ActiveX control associated with the file type.) It occurs in lists of attachments and entry share portlets. In a file details view, the Easy Edit button will include the name of the application that will be launched to do the editing. For example:
If this feature doesn't seem to work but you know you have the appropriate Microsoft Office application installed, please see the section entitled Windows Client Security Settings.
Double Clicking on a File in a Web Folder View
User Preferences | Files Panel - Edit in Office and File Options very conveniently allow you to double click on files to be able to edit them directly on your TeamPage server. This has the same effect as clicking the Easy Edit button from a File Details view, a share portlet, or attachment list. Whereas the Easy Edit button never appears for files that are not Word, PowerPoint or Excel files, you can double click on any file you want in a Web Folder view; but double clicking will not result in a direct edit if the target application does not have built-in support for WebDAV.
Direct Editing vs. Downloading
Ordinarily, when you click on a link to a Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel document in Internet Explorer, you either have the option to save it or open it. If you open the file in that case, you would be viewing a temporary local copy. You will not be editing the file directly on the TeamPage server; your changes will be lost unless you save a local copy and upload your new version. The same is true of any file type other than Microsoft Word, PowerPoint or Excel. You can easily tell that you are directly editing the file if the file path in the application includes a remote location prefix such as http: or https: instead of a local path like My Documents or C:\ or Windows Share (SMB) path such as \Server.
Direct Editing and Manual Locking
Manually locking a WebDAV file before trying to edit it directly in a Microsoft Office application will prevent the application from obtaining a lock on the file, and will result in this warning message:
This prevents you from editing the file directly. To use the direct editing feature, do not manually obtain a lock on the file; let the editing application obtain the lock for you.
Direct Editing and Version Control
These direct editing methods in Windows work seamlessly with the versioning features in TeamPage, and don't require a manual check out operation. Please see the section entitled Autoversioning for more information. You may manually check out a version controlled file and then edit it directly. If you directly edit a version controlled file that you have already checked out, you will be dealing with the behavior described in Checkout Checkin. The autoversioning behavior described in Autoversioning will not apply. In short, manually checking out a version controlled file is allowed, but TeamPage will not automatically check in the file when the editing session is complete, and instead relies on you to check in the file when all revisions are complete. Please see the section entitled, Autoversioning for more information on automatic lock, check out and check in features.
