Viewing Word 2007 in UR with Windows XP

[grahamrhind]

I saw a thread about problems with Office 2007 and Vista. I am experiencing strange behavour with UR and Office 2007 but on XP. Any pointers would be appreciated.

1) I followed to the letter the advice on how to create a Word template as shown in the same Document Summary sample. I create the template, I can create a new item, but I cannot edit the item (the cursor sits in the middle of the editting pane and keyboard input just "peeps" as if no editting is allowed.

2) In the same file it states about Word documents: "To view internally: add the appropriate extension to the File extensions to display in internal browser view: list found at Tools | Options | Browser <tab>."

If I do this, any Word document I click on in UR opens the file in Word EXTERNALLY.

3) In the same file it states: "To edit internally: do the above step, and also ensure the appropriate extension is loaded in the File extensions to open stored documents writable: list found at Tools | Options | Documents <tab>."

This works ONLY if I turn off the change made in (2) above; and also it displays the text without any rich text formatting (bold, italic etc) at all, so is basically pointless. Excel and Powerpoint also show in the same unformatted way.

Any pointers?

[grahamrhind]

OK, I've found the solution to 2 and 3:

Open "Windows Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > File Types"
Choose the file extension, for example DOC
Click the "Advanced" button
Check "Browse in same window"

Useful for other frustrated users, and perhaps Kinook might like to add this to their help and sample files.

Problem 1 remains .....

[quant]

Originally posted by grahamrhind
1) I followed to the letter the advice on how to create a Word template as shown in the same Document Summary sample. I create the template, I can create a new item, but I cannot edit the item (the cursor sits in the middle of the editting pane and keyboard input just "peeps" as if no editting is allowed.

do you have .doc files among the extensions to be open writable (tools->option->documents)?

[grahamrhind]

Yes ....

[grahamrhind]

The mystery deepens ...

If I follow the instructions in the help file and the online manual, I don't achieve anything except a sweated brow.

If I follow the very slightly different advice given in http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2405 I get a word template, so that's that problem out of the way, though I am left wondering why apparently identical steps achieve such different results.

The new problem is that now I can create and edit Word documents, but I can no longer edit internal Document template items (i.e. rtf items).

Does having a Word template mean that a Document template will no longer work? I've tried adding .rtf to the options to display in the internal text editor and to show in the browser ...

I can feel a headache coming on ...

[grahamrhind]

OK, so please excuse these ramblings - I think I've got it sorted now. Two more questions:

(1) If I create a Word template, I see the whole of the Word screen including (almost all of) the menu, so I can save the document. If I create an Excel template, I only see the workbook and no menu, so I can't change save the workbook except internally. Does anybody know of a way around that?

(2) After successfully creating an Excel spreadsheet, I started a second one. This caused UR to crash. Now if I try to create a spreadsheet I get a "File Download" IE dialogue which never closes. Is this a known issue?

Graham

[ashwken]

Graham,

I'm running Win XP SP-2, and MS Office 2000 SP-3.

There are a couple of additional comments that I would add to this post:

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthr...p;threadid=2405

My Options are set to always Store content when Importing.

1. The omissions that I would add is that after Importing a Word doc to the UR Template Folder, for the new Item created I then delete the value in the URL Attribute field (do a Ctrl-4 to show the Items Attributes Pane, the URL Attribute is found under the Document group).

2. For Tools | Options | Documents - Prompt before updating for local copy of Stored Document is Unchecked.

I don't know what, if any, bearing either of these omissions have on getting my posted instructions to work - I think I may have had to do this to keep the UR Template from taking on the edits of it's derived Item, but I'm just not sure (I didn't keep notes).

All I can say is that these are my settings and they work on my system. My apologies if these omissions have caused problems.

I will say that when creating a new item from a UR Template based on a Word doc, after editing the in the diplayed Word doc even though I Save within the displayed Word doc, when moving focus to a new Item UR will still flash a synchronizing screen. I don't know what it's synchronizing to enlight of my above settings (possibly the original UR Template - ??? - maybe this is an internal database thing).

Regarding your rtf problem - I can not duplicate it.

I can create a new Text Item (rtf) and edit to my hearts content. The same is true for the rtf area at the bottom of a new Contact Item.

Since you mentioned that your settings for Tools | Options | Editor - File extensions to display in the text editor conains .rtf (which I believe is default), I just don't know.

Regarding your problem with Excel, I haven't tried any of this with Excel yet.

Later,
KenA

[grahamrhind]

Thanks Ken. I solved the rtf issue - that was my stupidity - enough said.

A new thing I have noticed - I don't know if others can reproduce it: when I start UR and then open a Word document item from UR, that first document ALWAYS opens in an external Word window. Once that first document has been opened, the others open internally within UR, as per my settings.

I don't know if this has to do with some sort of initialisation requirement, but I thought I'd mention it.

Graham

[kinook]

Originally posted by grahamrhind
If I create a Word template, I see the whole of the Word screen including (almost all of) the menu, so I can save the document. If I create an Excel template, I only see the workbook and no menu, so I can't change save the workbook except internally. Does anybody know of a way around that?
It does appear that Excel 2007 doesn't display the ribbon when hosted inside of IE. Excel will prompt to save unsaved changes when leaving the item, and Ctrl+S with focus in Excel will also save.

After successfully creating an Excel spreadsheet, I started a second one. This caused UR to crash. Now if I try to create a spreadsheet I get a "File Download" IE dialogue which never closes. Is this a known issue?
I wasn't able to reproduce this behavior. Does restarting UR help? Can you ZIP and send or post a .urd file with the problem item (copy into a new DB)? Thanks.

[grahamrhind]

Originally posted by kinook
It does appear that Excel 2007 doesn't display the ribbon when hosted inside of IE. Excel will prompt to save unsaved changes when leaving the item, and Ctrl+S with focus in Excel will also save.


OK. Useful to know, then, is the F12 is Excel's "save as" option, because otherwise, relying on the current default behaviour, Excel sheets can only be created internally to UR and they are stored within UR when saved - there is no "save as" possibility.

However, if you F12 to save as, then when you leave a spreadsheet, UR does NOT ask to save the spreadsheet, it does not synchronize it internally, and changes are not saved, so users would need both F12 and Ctrl-S to save copies externally and internally.

If the kind people of Kinook could look at ways of overcoming this it would be quite a nice addition ...

Originally posted by kinook

I wasn't able to reproduce this behavior. Does restarting UR help? Can you ZIP and send or post a .urd file with the problem item (copy into a new DB)? Thanks.


I think I have resolved the issue by emptying the "Item title" attribute of the Excel template. As UR cannot currently "save as", opening more than one file seemed to make UR try to open and close and save two files with the same name at the same time. Hence the crash. It now saves as the document title, so those need to be different per spreadsheet.

Graham

[kevina]

When a document (such as an .xls file) stored in Ultra Recall is edited (either internally or externally), the stored "binary file" is written to a temp file on disk (to %TEMP%\UltraRecall\<itemid\) then the associated editor is invoked to edit the file (for an .xls file, this should be MS Excel), and Ultra Recall "remembers" the created temp file name so it can later "sync" any changes to this file with the stored content.

If you use Save As to saving your changes to a different file, Ultra Recall has no way of "knowing" about this alternate file, hence using F12 or "Save As" as you describe will not work with Ultra Recall.

Why do you want to save the file to an alternate location? You can drag the Info Item out of Ultra Recall to disk to do the equivalent of "Save As", but directly in Ultra Recall (after the stored copy is updated).

Please give more information about the "crash" you are experiencing with more than one excel file in Ultra Recall. Are tabs involved? Please give a sequence of steps to reproduce the problem...

I don't follow what you are doing/achieving by "emptying the Item Text attribute" of the Excel template. Please elaborate on this as well.

[grahamrhind]

Originally posted by kevina

Why do you want to save the file to an alternate location? You can drag the Info Item out of Ultra Recall to disk to do the equivalent of "Save As", but directly in Ultra Recall (after the stored copy is updated).


Well, Excel without a menu is hardly a powerful tool. To do anything really meaningful with a spreadsheet I would want to open it externally to UR. I could do this from UR, of course, but I don't (yet) have the confidence in UR to store data in it and only in it. I can't afford to lose data - rather 100 copies than no copies.

Also, I need to be able to be mobile with files - sending them by e-mail, for example. I can't do that with a spreadsheet in UR. Can I????

Originally posted by kevina

Please give more information about the "crash" you are experiencing with more than one excel file in Ultra Recall. Are tabs involved? Please give a sequence of steps to reproduce the problem...

I don't follow what you are doing/achieving by "emptying the Item Text attribute" of the Excel template. Please elaborate on this as well.

If I knew why changing an attribute would solve the problem, I'd have your job ;-)

I only know what I have posted - if I try to create more than one Excel spreadsheet in the same folder with the item TITLE (not text) attribute filled, and then move between them, I got a "trying to access server" dialogue which never goes - I have to exit UR using the task manager. No tabs are involved - I was moving between the items in the data explorer. I don't want to try to reproduce the problems because it lost me too much time and gave me too many missed heart beats, but if I come across it again, I'll try to giver a better description.

[kevina]

You can send a stored (or linked) excel spreadsheet directly from Ultra Recall, just select the item(s) in Ultra Recall and use File | Send (on the menu).

I can't reproduce the different behavior between having the Item Title attribute of the stored Excel document blank or not, but I wonder if a coincidence made this seem like a partial solution.

What I did find (with Excel 2003/2007) is that when I edit a spreadsheet in Excel (hosted inside of Ultra Recall), and navigate to a different item in Ultra Recall while the cell is in "edit mode", Ultra Recall will "hang", eventually displaying the "Server Busy" dialog, from which the only recovery is to "kill" Ultra Recall and restart it.

We are searching for a workaround for the above behavior (exhibited by Excel+the instance of Internet Explorer hosted in Ultra Recall) but for now the solution is simply to ensure you don't try to leave an internally edited spreadsheet while editing a cell value (simply navigate to a different cell first).

[grahamrhind]

Thanks Kevina. This sounds exactly right - it was probably what happened as I was typing stuff into the spreadsheets as a test and then moving between them. Thanks for working on it, and for the tip about e-mailing documents!