Showing posts with label office 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label office 2010. Show all posts

Sunday 4 March 2012

Office document in SP2010 won't open - Explorer fails, SDP fails.

Problem: Can't open Office documents (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).  Additionally can't connect to SharePoint using SPD2010 or Publish forms using InfoPath 2010.  Another effect has been that Windows Explorer won't display document library's.
Initial Hypothesis:  A colleague of mine Grzegorz Skorupa in Poznan figured out the issue using Fiddler.  Our site was running over SSL so he had to decrypt the response's and requests using Fiddler.  Fiddler was also used to intercept the requests from the Office client program.  From this he could see MS Word issuing more than simply GET and POST verbs.  Recently our SharePoint test environment had been hardened which include only allowing GET & POST verbs.  This also only occurs if you are using STSsession cookies.  This was previously discussed http://blog.sharepointsite.co.uk/2010/11/change-to-session-cookies-for-claims.html

You can check your farms cookies session setting using the following PowerShell cmd:
PS> Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig

As it has been explained to me, because the session cookies are being used, the cookies are no longer written to disk, so the Office application needs to authenticate (as it can't use the cookie created by the SharePoint browser session). The Office client uses WebDAV request, has to authenticate and it passes requests that are not GET or POST based to retrieve the file.

Resolution:  Check IIS and the instances of IIS are allowing all verbs in request filtering or use the default sessioncookies setting (false).
$sts = Get-SPSecurityTokenServiceConfig
$sts.UseSessionCookies = $false
$sts.Update()
iisreset

You can watch the http request types (request verbs) using Fiddler as highlighted below.

Thursday 3 March 2011

Google's Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Google’s Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office has been released and looks like a great option for informal collaboration.  It is not comparable to SharePoint but offers a good option for sharing and managing individual documents.
Problem: A user has a single document that needs to shared with multiple contributors and read-only users.  Document history is required.  User need the ability to go offline and sync up with the document when the have Internet access.
Hypothesis:  There are several options for tackling this problem and in SharePoint world, you can use Groove (Workspace in SP2010) to get a good solution but you will need licences, setup servers or buy BPOS and potentially install Groove/Workspace on users machines.  All the SharePoint solutions are great but they have costs and time requirements and are generally suited to people within the same enterprise or a agreed integration effort for authenticating.

Redefined Problem: The users are an informal group that need to collaborate on MS Office documents, they have no or low budget and they need a version history.  Users come from multiple locations and have Internet access.
Hypothesis:  Google has released a software plug-in for MS Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 that hooks office documents to Google Docs.  Google docs already exists and offers this functionality but not directly from word, also you can't collaborate on the same document at the same time.  So this plug-in is a cheap alternative to a SharePoint Document library with a Grove/Workspace client.  Functionality is very limited but for simple sharing and collaboration, this is a good option.
Resolution:  As always the answer is .. "It depends".  It isn't a competitor but it offers a simple alternative to sharing documents.  A good example would be if I had a document that I need to give to a digital agency using the Google Cloud Connect for MS Office I don't need to get them access to SharePoint.  If it far more informal and won't work for large amounts of data but there are definitely good reasons to use the solution.
Quote:  Shan Sinha Google product manager explains Google's Cloud Connect plug-in “The plugin syncs your work through Google’s cloud, so everyone can contribute to the same version of a file at the same time. You can edit a Word document’s table of contents from Dublin while co-workers adjust formatting and make revisions from Denver. Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people’s edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together.”

Download and home page for Google Cloud Connect for MS Office.
Read More:
Take a look at the movie in this post

Access SharePoint document libraries from Office

Problem: You can't save a word document to a SharePoint 2010 document library directly from word.  This applies to all products in the office suite and saving to SP2010 & MOSS from Windows Server 2008.  I was getting the error "You can't open this location using this program." when pointing the document to a SharePoint library.

Note: This only applies if your OS is Windows 2008 Server.

Initial Hypothesis: This only affects Windows 2008 Server users.  So it's really just developers looking at saving to SharePoint from the Windows 2008 Server environment, you would also need Office installed.  The issue is with the restricted access the Windows 2008 server allows by default.

Resolution:
Open Server Manager > Features > Add the "Desktop Experience" feature.  Andrew Woodward has a post on the issue for more information.
http://www.21apps.com/sharepoint/windows-server-2008-developing-sharepoint-cant-connect-from-office-clients/

Friday 4 February 2011

MOSS export list SSL issue

Problem: I can't export a list to a excel spreadsheet file from a SharePoint 2007/WSS3.0 site is using SSL.  SP2010 exports https lists correctly. 
Initial Hypothesis: File is being exported however, when opening the *.iqy file, the error "Excel cannot connect to the SharePoint list." pops up. 
Resolution: This is a bug with 2 workarounds,
  • Option1: From excel connect to the list. or
  • Option 2: Save the *.iqy file, open it using notepad, chnage the url to use https instead of http (it occurs twice in the iqy file.