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791

answers:

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I have a use case that seems pretty simple, but after Googling around I can't find a solution. I have some Word documents on an FTP server and I'd like to be able to create a link that would download them into Word and then allow the saved changes to be sent back to the FTP server.

The problem is that I can only get Word to either open the file from the FTP server as read-only and I can't save the changes back to the server automatically, or the file downloads to a temporary location which isn't automatically saved back to the server. I'm creating my link like this:

<a href="ftp://ftp.example.com/www/uploads/Image/test.doc">Test</a>

Frustratingly, if I go into Word File|Open and paste the link "ftp://ftp.example.com/www/uploads/Image/test.doc" I can save back to the server. What gives? Is there a solution? From Googling around it seems that Sharepoint offers this ability, but that's not practical for us. We're using IE7 and Office 2003.

A: 

I believe Microsoft Word can read / write WebDAV - see this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/302284/editable-word-document-from-jsp

Can you set up some kind of proxy that can connect via FTP?

Phill Sacre
Hmmmm... Word can also read and write to FTP servers, it just doesn't seem to work when the document is opened from a link on a web page.
The traditional behavior for a browser when dealing with FTP is to download to a temporary directory. If you open up via File->Open, you're using the shell's ability to open remote folders via FTP as read-write.
Yuliy