XLS in internal viewer

[magnus]

I am trying to configure UR to display and edit .xls files in the internal viewer. In the options, browser tab I added the .xls extension to display in internal browser view.

On the options, documents tab I added the .xls extension to open stored documents writeable.

When I click on an .xls file in the data explorer pane I am promted to either open or save the file. Clicking on open will launch Excel externally and open the file.

I am running UR ver 2.0c from a USB stick on Win XP pro.

[kevina]

What version of Office/Excel are you using? If you enter the local url to the .xls file in the address bar of regular Internet Explorer, does it behave the same way? (Ultra Recall is leveraging Internet Explorer for this functionality)

[magnus]

I am using MS Office Pro 2003. The Excel sheet I was working with is stored in UR. There is no copy on the local file system. I tried another Excel file that is linked to the file system and got the same results even if I put the url in the address bar.

[kevina]

Your response is unclear as to whether you tried entering the url to a local xls file into the address bar of Ultra Recall or Internet Explorer, but they actually should behave identically.

This MS support page (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q162059/) describes the opposite of what you are requesting (it shows how to avoid office documents from opening in a browser) but doing the opposite steps might resolve your issue (or at least confirm that these settings are correct).

[magnus]

Yes I did try to open an Excel file in IE and it opened up Excel outside of IE.

I have a friend who is using the trial version of UR ver 2.0a and it works correctly there. My version 2.0c does not.

[kevina]

Since IE is behaving the same way, this is a configuration issue with IE or Windows (Ultra Recall is simply doing the same thing as IE, which is behavior UR can't override).

See my last post for MS instructions on how to check and configure this Windows/IE behavior.

[magnus]

Problem resolved. Thanks

[magnus]

Now that I am able to view and edit Excel files in UR, I noticed another odd behaviour.

If I have a stored Excel file open in UR I cannot open another Excel file outside of UR at the same time.

Is it possible to get the menu bar to show when editing an Excel document in UR?

[kevina]

Unfortunately IE won't show the menu bar of Excel (good question why...), and the "one instance of Excel issue when it is hosted in IE" is another MS limitation. Wish I could be more help (I personally use Open Document or Ctrl+J to edit stored or linked Excel documents for these reasons)...