Using Office 2010 web apps with ASP.NET

Question

Would it be possible to use the Office 2010 web apps with an ASP.NET application?

For example: - For each user of my ASP.NET application there is a folder with Word documents on my server - The ASP.NET application displays the available documents in a grid to the user - When clicking on one of the documents in the grid, the Word document is loaded in an IFrame which contains the Office 2010 web apps Word interface and editing of the document can take place - After editing, the document can be saved to the server, and the ASP.NET grid displays an updated status

Would such a scenario be possible? And what do you need, e.g. Sharepoint, Office 2010 licenses?

Tarbes

This would be a novel idea to implement....do post the solution if you find one. thanks. – Capsular

It has been a while since I've posted this question, so far I've seen no solutions anywhere to be able to accomplish using Office 2010 Web Apps with ASP.NET. However, an interesting alternative these days is to use Silverlight RichTextEdit components like those from Telerik, DevExpress or Syncfusion. Of course not as full featured as Office 2010 for the moment, but for simple word editing it's a possibility. In case anyone still finds a solution for the original question: I'm still interested :) – Tarbes

Additionally it seems Teamlab is building something interesting. Hopefully they will make their document editor open-source too like the rest of their platform: teamlab.com/blog/2012/03/… – Tarbes

I'd even be happy if you had to redirect away from the current site entirely, as long as the Office web app had the appropriate document loaded for the user and could save it back to the appropriate place. – Despotic

Answer 1

I think you will want to have a look at Sharepoint, because I think this is exactly what it does (plus many more things).

Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) is a free add-on for windows 2003/2008 server systems and contains the base Sharepoint functionality. In addition there are the commercial products which extend WSS (MS Office Sharepoint Server or Sharepoint Portal Server or whatever they are called).

Scleroderma

Yes, I understand Sharepoint is something to look at. However, as I'm building custom ASP.NET applications, which actually also need Word editing capabilities, I would like to know how to use it in combination with each other. Especially now Office 2010 is going to provide the web apps functionality: webbased editing in Word/Excel/Powerpoint, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Apps Are you saying WSS would be sufficient for combining ASP.NET solutions with Office 2010 webbased editing? – Tarbes

Answer 2

The Office Web Apps come with SharePoint 2010, but they are also used with SkyDrive. This indicates to me that what you are asking for is possible (Microsoft is doing it), but the software isn't bundled separately. Of course, I have no idea what MS had to do in order to integrate Office Web Apps with SkyDrive.

Swingletree

Do you have a link/reference for OWA shipping with SharePoint 2010? I haven't seen that announcement. – Cerement

Now that you ask, I think I'm making a bit of an assumption... Nothing official from MSFT, but webworkerdaily.com/2009/11/18/… This also indicates that Office Web Apps will only be supported on SP 2010 and not 2007 blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/11/18/9924525.aspx (see comment from Franklin [MSFT]). – Swingletree

Answer 3

"Word document is loaded in an IFrame which contains the Office 2010 web apps Word interface"

• you can not do that because of Office web Apps restriction. I ve tried open in IFrame, in sharepoint modal window. Unfortunately can not, only standart new window using.

Vories