Intranet - Selectively Opening Word Doc or Editing Template based on DOT File

  • Thread starter Thread starter eetrojan
  • Start date Start date
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eetrojan

Several months ago, I managed to setup a fledgling intranet to let our
secretaries open Word docs based on .dot Word templates through
"intranet" pages that contain standard html links. I did this by
right-clicking the .dot files to create .lnk shortcuts to the .dot
files in the same directory.

The HTML code that allows the user to open a .doc document file based
on the .dot template actually points to the .lnk file like this:

<a href="forms\letterhead.dot.lnk">Open New Letterhead Document</a>

It works great for opeing document files based on the template.



Fastforward to now....

I'd like to add a second "Edit" link that would let certain power
users edit the underlying .dot template file. In searching the web,
it seems that the following HTML would open the .dot template in edit
mode, rather than a .doc document based on the template:

<a href="forms\letterhead.dot">Edit Template</a>

Unfortunately, it open a .dot template file, but it's a "(read only)"
copy.

My test machine is running Office 2003 and IE 6.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Joe.
 
This isn't using the Intranet but if you are networking this will work.
If you have workgroup templates and user templates and using a network
on your computers you can designate an area on the network to store all
of the templates.

Our organization has a network setup and we have our documents in our
area private and file locations for My Documents set to that area of the
network. In order for our secretaries to share template files without
sharing Normal.dot and having to copy new templates to every computer, I
moved our template folders to our private network area and created
shortcuts to those folders and put them in the templates folder on the
hard drive. I copied the shortcuts to a floppy disk, cleared out all the
folders except the Templates folder itself and copied the folder
shortcuts into the Templates folder on the computers in our group. They
are accessible by File | New.

That way your power users can have access to the templates and changes
are available to everyone. You can add access for your power users to
the "real" templates folder by adding access through "My Places" and
putting it in the Look In menu in File | Open.
 
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