Opening a DOC from a SharePoint site may generate an error if Word is virtualized

  • Article

image

Here's an interesting issue that was sent to me by Sebastian Gernert, one of our hard working App-V Support Engineers across the pond in the glorious land of Germany.  This one is about an issue you may run into when Microsoft Word is virtualized and you try to open a DOC or DOCX file from a SharePoint site:

Issue: When you have Microsoft Word virtualized and streamed to a client, if you open a SharePoint site, select a doc file and in the drop down list you choose "Edit in Microsoft Word" you may receive the following error:

Error:
---------------------------
Windows Internet Explorer
---------------------------
'Edit Document' requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Cause: SharePoint is looking for ProgID's "Sharepoint.OpenDocuments.*".  These are registered by the Windows SharePoint Services Support component in Office Tools.  These ProgID's are not part of a file association, but simply part of the SharePoint COM objects hosted in owssupp.dll.  The ProgID's are in the virtual registry, and the COM library is in the package, but since neither of these are available outside the virtual environment we get the error above.

For more information on this see: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/833714.

Resolution: There are three possible workarounds for this issue:

1. Install SSW (SharePoint Services for Windows) from the Office CD on each client.  Installing SharePoint Services 3.0 may also work although I have not personally tested that.

2. Save the document locally before editing.

3. Run Internet Explorer inside the virtual environment, either by opening it directly from a virtual app or by adding an OSD for it to the package.  See the following KB article for more information:

KB931986 - How to use SoftGrid Sequencer together with Windows Internet Explorer and together with other related programs

Any of the three above should allow you to open Word docs directly from SharePoint if Microsoft Word is virtualized.

========

Thanks Sebastian!

J.C. Hornbeck | Manageability Knowledge Engineer