Can we open excel in WebForm?

[Guest]

Hi all,
Can i open and edit the excel sheet on web page after downloading?
After editing, i close the web page and the excel file auto upload to the
server.
Is it possible? I really struggling about the ability.
If not, what advice can u provide?

thank you in advance.
ur help will be appreaciated.

Best regards,
Ocurnos

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Can i open and edit the excel sheet on web page after downloading?

Sort of.

After editing, i close the web page and the excel file auto upload to the
server.

Sort of.

Is it possible?

Sort of.

You can't literally download an Excel Spreadsheet in a browser, edit it, and
close the browser to upload it back to the browser.

What you CAN do is to create a browser interaface that allows you to
download a copy of an Excel Spreadsheet, edit it, and upload it back to the
server. However, this is far from a simple task to accomplish. First, it
will require some highly-refined and detailed requirements, that take
security issues, multi-user issues, versioning issues, network issues,
concurrency issues, browser issues, and other related issues into account.
The requirements must specifically define the business requirements that
address each of these issues.

Do you expect every user to have a copy of Microsoft Excel installed on
their machine? If not, you will have to present them the Spreadsheet in some
more cross-platform-compatible format, and transform it at both ends of the
pipeline.

Achieving such an application is a long and difficult process. You may want
to take a look at using Microsoft SharePoint Services for a good,
ready-made, programmable platform, which has this sort of thing built in.

Another alternative is to re-examine the requirement that the Excel
Spreadsheet must be downloaded and edited. People misuse Excel for a large
variety of purposes. Quite often, this sort of requirement turns out to be
better addressed using a database.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Ambiguity has a certain quality to it.

 

[Tim_Mac]

hi ocurnos.
to understand your situation better, you need to think about what is
actually happening. when you open an excel document through a web site, you
are downloading it to your temporary internet files and working on that
local version of it. if you click Save, it is saved to the temporary
internet files.

it is quite easy to set up a 'web folder' on IIS5 or 6 with frontpage server
extensions, and then when an authenticated user opens a document, it is
opened like a document on a network share, which can be saved directly back
to its location. lots of collaboration environments i have seen use this
approach. you don't use HTTP to open the document, you use the windows
share syntax: \\www.server.com\ShareName
you can browse the documents in the folder through windows explorer, or what
is nice on a website is to put an iframe in your web page, with the src set
to \\www.server.com\ShareName and you can browse the files 'through' your
web browser, you basically have windows explorer embedded in your web page.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sppt/sharepnt/proddocs/admindoc/owsj04.mspx
for more details.

hope this helps
tim

 

[Guest]

Hi all,
Thanks Kevin n Tims' response.

Tim, ur solution seems interesting and new to me.
can u more elaborate on coding side by using asp.net that connect to shared
web folder?

thank you in advance.

Best regards,
Ocurnos.

 

[Guest]

in addition, if my os is only windows xp pro. Can it be done although is not
a server (file server..)??

 

[Tim_Mac]

hi Daniel,
yes, actually it isn't anything to do with asp.net. it is just like mapping
a network drive to a folder on your website, using Windows, not asp.net or
the web browser or anything.

-------------------------- blog: http://tim.mackey.ie

 

[Tim_Mac]

hi Daniel,
yes, actually it isn't anything to do with asp.net. it is just like mapping
a network drive to a folder on your website, using Windows. there is a
feature of FrontPage Server Extensions that allows this connection over the
Internet.
i'm not an expert on it, but i did get it working recently. to do it in
your XP pro machine, add FrontPage Server Extensions to your Add/Remove
Programs > Windows Components > IIS. then you can create a 'server
extensions web' instead of a virtual directory. hey presto.
in my scenario, i didn't want to use a web browser, so i just used the
Windows Map Network Drive > "connect to network server" and then type in
http://yourserver/ShareName and you can start opening and saving office
documents seamlessly through windows. what i've seen done, but never done
myself, is to embed windows explorer into a browser (i assume using IFRAME,
but i might be wrong), and then you have all your files and folders on your
web site. open, rename, copy / paste, drag drop etc. i call this approach
the baby brother to a VPN over Http. it is reasonably secure if you remove
anonymous authentication and use windows auth instead. but i found when
opening documents it asked for the password each time, slightly annoying.

so if you want to see how well this works for you, try and connect as a
client through windows explorer > map network drive, before you try and
embed it in a browser. i tried to reproduce what i've seen before, but i
got stuck because i couldn't use the UNC \\server\share syntax to access the
web folder. if this could be done, you could use the UNC path for the
IFRAME and you'd be in business.

there are newsgroups for frontpage server extensions, where the web-folder
experts live, and i think you'll get better help there if you want to go
this route. i would also suggest that what you're really looking for is
"office collaboration over the web" more than a custom asp.net application.
sharepoint is the obvious choice for this, but you may not want to go that
route.

good luck
tim