Excel Services Getting Started – Pt3 EWA

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This continues my previous checklists here and here on getting started with Excel Services. In this post, I’ll append a walkthrough for using Excel Web Access.

5. Using Excel Web Access

5.1 Make the EWA web part available in your sub-site

a. Note: this task is only required if you did not base your site on the Document Workspace template.

b. We want to create a new page for this sub-site, using the Excel Web Access web part. However, the EWA web part is not available by default for new sub-sites based off the Blank Site template. If we had based the site off the Document Workspace site template, the EWA web part would be available by default. Depending on which template you did use, the web part might be part of a feature that simply needs to be activated on your site.

c. If not, we can simply copy the EWA web part from the top-level site gallery into the sub-site gallery. To do this, navigate to the default home page for the SharePoint server, eg: https://MyServer/Pages/Default.aspx

d. Select the Site Actions drop-down in the top right-hand corner, and click Site Settings, then Modify All Site Settings.

e. Under Galleries, click Web Parts.

f. From the list of web parts, find the Microsoft.Office.Excel.WebUi.dwp, and click the Edit Document Properties link.

g. On the properties page, click the Export button, and save the dwp to some location on your machine.

h. Then, navigate to the sub-site, eg: https://MyServer/sites/Contoso

i. Select the Site Actions menu, Site Settings option.

j. Under Galleries, click Web Parts.

k. Click Upload, and find the Microsoft.Office.Excel.WebUi.dwp that you exported previously.

l. Edit the web part properties to match the properties in the top-level site gallery. Most of the properties are already set for you, and you can actually accept all the defaults. For consistency, however, you can type in “Business Data” for the group, and “Dashboard” for the Quick Add Groups.

m. Note that the .DWP is simply an XML file that identifies the DLL for the web part:

<WebPart xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2" >

       <Assembly>Microsoft.Office.Excel.WebUI, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>

       <TypeName>Microsoft.Office.Excel.WebUI.ExcelWebRenderer</TypeName>

       <Title>Excel Web Access</Title>

       <Description>Use the Excel Web Access to interact with an Excel workbook as a Web page.</Description>

       <FrameType>TitleBarOnly</FrameType>

       <PartImageSmall>/_layouts/images/ewr023.gif</PartImageSmall>

       <PartImageLarge>/_layouts/images/ewr023.gif</PartImageLarge>

</WebPart>

5.2 Create a new Web Part page in MOSS (EwaTest.aspx)

a. Navigate to your sub-site, eg: https://MyServer/sites/Contoso.

b. Select the Site Actions menu, Create option. On the Create page, under Web Pages, select Web Part page.

c. On the Create Page page, type in a suitable title for the page, eg “EwaTest” – this will be an .ASPX page.

d. Select the simplest layout template to base the new page on: Full Page Vertical.

e. Select any of your site’s document libraries as the save location, eg Spreadsheets, and click Create.

f. SharePoint creates the new page and navigates to it. On the new page, click the Add Web Park link.

g. From the Add Web Parts menu, scroll down to the All Web Parts, Business Data section, select the Excel Web Access part, and click Add.

5.3 Associate the web part with a workbook

a. On the new web part page, under Select a Workbook, click the link to open the tool pane.

b. In the EWA properties pane, either type in a (relative or absolute) URL to the workbook you want to render in this EWA part, or click the Browse button to navigate to the workbook. You can choose any workbook, including any that you have uploaded to this site’s document library, eg: /sites/Contoso/Spreadsheets/ContosoSales.xlsx.

c. For the purposes of this exercise, you can leave all the other settings at their defaults. Click OK, and exit Edit Mode. This will take you to the new page. You can also get to this page by navigating independently to it, eg: https://MyServer/sites/Contoso/Spreadsheets/EwaTest.aspx

d. Done.