ASP.NET Office Automation

[Michael Bredbury]

I want to write a web-based system using ASP.NET which will automate a
users MS Office products and have them visible on their computer. I do
not want to use the Webbrowser to host an Office application, I want
the Office product (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) to run on the users
computer just as it would if it had been started by the user. If I can
snap the Office application's window handle to the user's web-browser
then that will be a bonus. I also want to be able to automate the
application, load in a document and size the window etc. All of this
was easy to do with Visual Basic 6,5 etc when running as an
application on a single computer, but now I wish to do it using
VB.NET, ASP.NET as a web-based application.

Once again, this is not for a VB.NET windows application, it will be a
VB/ASP.NET Web Application.

Regards

Mike Bredbury.

 

[Alvin Bruney]

that's not possible. well it is but it requires some advanced knowledge, and
heavy coding. in a nutshell, a webpage cannot just run executables on a
desktop, this presents a major security issue. Only active x controls are
allowed to do that and even so they must have explicit permission from the
desktop.

Why do you not want to automate word from asp.net. is there a particular
reason? This is by far, your best alternative.

this was possible in vb only because the process was running local to the
machine by the way

 

[Michael Bredbury]

that's not possible. well it is but it requires some advanced knowledge, and
heavy coding. in a nutshell, a webpage cannot just run executables on a
desktop, this presents a major security issue. Only active x controls are
allowed to do that and even so they must have explicit permission from the
desktop.

Why do you not want to automate word from asp.net. is there a particular
reason? This is by far, your best alternative.

this was possible in vb only because the process was running local to the
machine by the way

There could be anything from 1 to 100 users at any one time using the
applications, so I do not want to run the applications on the server.
I need to run the applications on the client side so the user's
computer is used. I have had a lot of experience with automation
before, so I know how much work is involved, and you are correct,
there is a lot of work needed to do this. I do not have any ASP.NET
experience though, and I am uncertain how to go about writing this
using Visual Studio.NET 2002.
I have had success with creating an ActiveX DLL in VB6 which automates
the applications on the client side, the only option I needed to set
in the browser was ‘Download Unsigned ActiveX controls', but I had to
use the HTML editor in VS.NET and type in the code which is clunky,
but it worked.
I guess my question now is, should I stick with the ActiveX DLL
written in VB6 and use the HTML editor, or is there another technology
I can make use of such as the ASP.NET Web Services, that will do the
same job as the ActiveX DLL?
Also, as I understand it, ASP.NET basically runs everything server
side and would be of any use?

Regards

Mike Bredbury.

 

[Alvin Bruney]

Ok i am with you now.

There are two kinds of OWC objects. One runs server side - which is what you
are talking about (which you don't want), and the other runs clientside as
an actived X control. That is the one you want. It is still OWC. Drag and
drop it unto the visual studio .net aspx form, it produces a unique object
on the html side, already registered for you.

After that, you only need to hook up the events that you want the
spreadsheet to respond to, like mouseover, onclick etc. You will essentially
be coding inline using script. BUT, you can freely mix it with webserver
controls and automate the object from the server side if you wanted to. What
this means is that you will not only limit your aspx page to run html
controls, you can add webserver controls and automate the spreadsheet with
these webserver controls.

If you want the user's computer to do all the work, stick with OWC client
side and html controls.

If you need more specific help, let me know. I have a website coming out
soon which walks programmers from these scenarios.