Editing Office documents online

Question

Please let me know what are the different programmatic options available to edit office documents like word, excel or ppt online?

Answer 1

Hi Prashanth, 

Can you be more specific as to your scenario and what you're trying to accomplish? What do you mean by "edit"? Are you trying to build a web app that can manipulate office documents without the help of the Office web apps or desktop apps? Are you attempting to build a web app solution where users of the web app can interactively view and edit Office documents within your web app? I'll need more information before I can point you to resources. 

Best regards,
Tom Jebo
Sr Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Open Specifications

Answer 2

Hello Tom,

Thanks for the reply.

What we are actually trying is...we have a web application where users can store office documents like word, excel or ppt as attachments. So the functionality we are trying to achieve is so that users can view/edit the stored office attachments without actually downloading them i.e., should be able to view/edit from with in the browser itself. We are exploring both cloud and on-premise options.

So please let us know different programmatic options to achieve the functionality as above.

Thanks in advance,

Prashanth

Answer 3

Hi Prashanth,

The one obvious answer to this would be to implement a WOPI protocol handler on your web app's backend and let Office web apps do the editing and viewing work. You can read about the WOPI protocol with these two links: 

https://wopi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

MS-WOPI Web Application Open Platform Interface Protocol

The former is a site that is targeted toward cloud implementers of the WOPI protocol and integrating with Microsoft's Office for the Web products (in the cloud). The latter is the technical protocol specification, much of which is encapsulated in the former. 

If you chose to implement this protocol and make use of the Office web apps and you want to integrate with Microsoft's cloud product, you will need to engage with the Cloud Storage Partner Program, information for which is here:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cloud-storage-partner-program

If you are interested in using your solution in your local enterprise, for example on-premises, there is a server product called Office Online Server available for download in our Volume Licensing Service Center: 

https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/default.aspx

Questions about CSPP and cloud integration are handled on a separate Yammer group which you'll find once you register with CSPP. For on-premises integration with Office Online Server, you can ask questions about the WOPI protocol here on this forum. 

I hope this helps,

Tom

Answer 4

Hello Tom,

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply.

based on your reply i did some research and reading on WOPI through the website https://wopi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ and the following are our queries

1. As mentioned by you that we need to engage with the Cloud Storage Partner Program in order to integrate Office Online into our applications. We tried registering through the link https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cloud-storage-partner-program but unfortunately haven't received any response back and not even an acknowledgement
   

2. In the same website its also stated that "Office for the web only makes WOPI requests to trusted partner domains.". If we have our application in an hosted environment where its been configured for different customers. In this scenario it might be required to register url of every customer under Microsoft like e.g. xyz.com/customerA and xyz.com/customerB. So our query is whether this will lead to any compliance issues?
   

3. It is mentioned that business users require an Office 365 subscription to edit files in Office for the web. In our case can we perform the WOPI Client request using system user (user with super admin rights) of our application? How does this affect the licensing. Does every user accessing the web application is expected to have O365 credentials?
   

4. How is licensing model works for on-premise Office Online server? is it same as an cloud Office Online Server when integrated with a custom web application?

Thanks in Advance,
Prashanth

Answer 5

Hi Prashanth, 

1. The program usually takes some time to engage. Please be patient and direct questions to the contacts (email and otherwise) obtained when registering.

2. This is something that you would have to discuss with the CSPP organizers. Please direct all questions about CSPP to that program. This forum does not provide CSPP information.

3. For CSPP, please direct this to the program contacts. For Office Online Server, you can see licensing topics discussed here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/office
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing_Microsoft_Office_Software.pdf
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2016/05/04/office-online-server-now-available/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/product-licensing/products

There are also contacts mentioned in those links if you have further questions about licensing. This forum is only for questions related to the wire protocol documented in MS-WOPI and does not specifically address licensing, purchasing and other topics for Office Online Server.

4. See #3 above.

Tom

Answer 6

Hello Tom,

Thanks a lot for your replies. The answers posted here really helped us to arrive at a conclusion and clear our doubts regarding Office Online Server.

I also wanted to confirm that we have received a reply from the Cloud Partner Program also.

Thanks a lot once again!

Best regards,
Prashanth