URI Schema ms-word makes no difference between open-for-view and open-for-edit

ft 56

Hello,

we need for our intranet some hyperlinks to Word documents, which are generated dynamically from an other system. the documents are located on a network drive.
so far everything is working.

The problem is only

<a href="ms-word:ofv|u|file://///server/path/document.docx">view</a>  
<a href="ms-word:ofe|u|file://///server/path/document.docx">edit</a>

these two lines behave the same.
according to Microsoft office-uri-schemes
ofv is open for view and
ofe is open for edit
but thats not working this way.
Both can change the document and by click on Save it is overwriten.

Is there any way to open the documents in read-only, view or at least like a new document (with no reference to the original one), so saving will not overwrite the original?
Thank you

We have installed Office365.

Emily Hua-MSFT 27,526 Reputation points

2021-09-28T02:28:49.41+00:00

@ft
As tag "office-word-itpro" focus more on gerenal issues of Word client, but your issue is realted to Word development. To better help you, I would add the tag, thansk for your understanding.
ft 56 Reputation points

2021-09-28T13:40:17.36+00:00

thank you for adding office-addins-dev to tags. i placed as well office-itpro out of lack of choice.
but these are wrong too.
to be honest, there exists no suitable tag for this problem. I would have expected something like office-dev
because I assume that this problem will also occure with excel,... and the other office uri schemes.
Arnaud DESAULTY 1 Reputation point

2021-12-29T08:08:27.05+00:00

Hi I've got the same problem.

I have a WebDAV server that serves .docx files.
When i try to use uri schema to control the way it opens it doesn't work (it always open in edit mode.

What is interesting is that when i try to open a .docx source from the web, the ofv flag is taken into account and the document is opened in readonly, so the problem doesn't seem to lie in word itself

I've tried 2 differents WebDAV servers and i've encoutered this problem in both instances.

Word version : Office 365 version 2111
ft 56 Reputation points

2021-12-29T11:46:20.077+00:00
hi, can you be more specific to

1

from the web

an URL with (A) the standard http protocol
or (B) another WebDAV server with read/write access
in the internet?

for (A) you will always get write-protected documents, never editable. here an example:
<a href="ms-word:ofv|u|https://file-examples-com.github.io/uploads/2017/02/file-sample_100kB.docx">http view</a>
<a href="ms-word:ofe|u|https://file-examples-com.github.io/uploads/2017/02/file-sample_100kB.docx">http edit</a>

did you tried the other way? (ofe) could you edit&save the document in the web?

2

so the problem doesn't seem to lie in word itself

why exactly this conclusion?
we dont use WebDAV. we need it only for local network, so SMB is more than enough. this would mean, following you, both protocols have the same issue.

as far as i understand the problem, the command-argument ofe/ofv is not proper processed by office, as documented.

it gives only attention to the access rights of the document, and if its on a trusted folder.

for now i did a workaround. dont have much hopes here.
created a second share for the same target with only read access.
and manage this by php/js on our intranet site:

view link to the readonly share

edit link to the readwrite share.

the only thing left for me to say is, wish you a happy new year in a couple of days ;)
Arnaud DESAULTY 1 Reputation point

2021-12-29T17:09:02.807+00:00

Hi and thanks for your comments.

Indeed i did not check if the document that I opened from a standard url could be edited with ofe (it cannot)

I based my assumption of something wrong with my implementation because of this.

So it seems after all that there is a problem with the uri scheme itfself, like you said

Have a happy new year too !

URI Schema ms-word makes no difference between open-for-view and open-for-edit

it gives only attention to the access rights of the document, and if its on a trusted folder.