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Shane Hicks is an independent consultant and technical trainer, providing support to individuals and small businesses. He's been in the industry for over 10 years. Email your questions, it will be answered as space permits.
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It seems that everywhere I go, office managers want collaboration,
groups of individuals working jointly on documents across the corporate
network. Microsoft has gone a long way to make this easier than ever in
their latest versions of Microsoft Office. But what do you do when your
collaboration tools don’t work exactly the way you expected them to? That
is the subject of this month’s article. |
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A local system administrator needs to share a Microsoft Word document with
users on the company network. He places this document in a shared folder
on the network and maps this folder to each computer at startup. Each user
has an active desktop, which displays a custom HTML page as their background.
The administrator places a link to the shared document as an icon on the
users’ active desktop. However, when users click on the link, the document
opens up in the web browser with a document viewer, instead of opening
in Word. |
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This happens because Internet Explorer (IE) is configured, by default,
to host documents from Microsoft Office programs which are installed on
the computer.
| NOTE: |
This solution contains information about editing the registry.
Before editing these settings, insure there is a backup of these system
files, and that they can be restored in the event something goes wrong. |
To get IE to open files in the appropriate program, follow these steps:
Microsoft Windows 95 / 98 / ME with Internet Explorer
3.02 or later
To configure your settings:
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Double-click on My Computer
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On the View menu, click Options (or Folder Options)
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Click the File Types tab
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In the Registered file types list, click the specific Office document type
(for example, Microsoft Excel Worksheet), and click Edit
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In the Edit File Type dialog box, perform one of the following steps, depending
on the version of Internet Explorer that you are running:
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In IE3, clear the Open Web documents in place check box
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In IE4 and above, clear the Browse in same window box
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Click OK
Microsoft Windows NT / 2000 / XP
To configure your settings:
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Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe)
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Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes
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Under this key, locate the sub-key for the specific document
This table lists common document types:
| Document Type |
Sub-Key |
| Access 7.0 database application |
Access.Application.7 |
| Access 97 database application |
Access.Application.8 |
| Access 2000 database application |
Access.Application.9 |
| Excel 7.0 worksheet |
Excel.Sheet.5 |
| Excel 97 worksheet |
Excel.Sheet.8 |
| Excel 2000 worksheet |
Excel.Sheet.8 |
| Word 7.0 document |
Word.Document.6 |
| Word 97 document |
Word.Document.8 |
| Word 2000 document |
Word.Document.8 |
| Project 98 project |
MSProject.Project.8 |
| PowerPoint 2000 document |
PowerPoint.Show.8 |
To locate the sub-key for a type not included in this table, find the
sub-key for the document extension associated with the document type. The
default value for that sub-key contains the name of the sub-key for that
document type.
For example, the .xls extension is associated with Excel worksheets.
Under the .xls sub-key, the default value contains the string "Excel.Sheet.5."
Therefore, the sub-key for the Microsoft Excel Worksheet document type
is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Excel.Sheet.5
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Click on the desired sub-key, then click Add Value on the Edit menu
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then add the following value for all subkeys except Excel.Sheet.8:
Value name: BrowserFlags
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value: 8
For Excel.Sheet.8, add the following value:
Value name: BrowserFlags
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value: 9
Click OK , and then quit Registry Editor.
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| Once these changes are made, documents should open in the application
of choice. From there, they are ready for editing.
That’s all the time I have for this month. Keep those questions coming,
and I’ll do my best to bring the answers back to you.
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