Have SharePoint 2010 open office documents in browser on an live farm

• September 16, 2010
• Sameer Mohammed
• no comments

This blog walks through the process of configuring a SharePoint server so that office documents open up in the browser by default for reading and editing. Also for those who are new to Office web apps, Installing Office Web app is the only way to achieve this.

Blog assumes that SharePoint is already installed and configured. Installing office web app on a SharePoint farm that is not configured saves the extra step of re-running the config wizard.

Following are the steps :
1. Install Office Web App on the Server

2. When the installation is completed it will open the SharePoint 2010 product configuration wizard.

3. If this wizard is not run then even though office web app is installed on the server SharePoint will not recognize it and If you go to Central Admin\ Security settings\ Manage services on Server you will still not see any of the office web app service
a. Word Viewing service
b. Excel service
c. Powerpoint service

4. Run the SharePoint 2010 product configuration wizard
a. Log in to the SharePoint server as the DataAccess account that was configured but this farm and start the Configuration wizard, running this while logged in as any other user can cause the wizard to fail with a database unaccessible error.

b. When prompted with the alert that some of the services need to be restarted, click on Yes

c. After the config run successfully it will make sure that SharePoint registers office web app services.

5. Start the Service: Go to CA\ security setting\ manage services on the server and start the services that office web app installed
a. Word viewing service
b. Excel calculation services
c. PowerPoint services

6. Create a Proxy for the web office app services that you need: I will demonstrate it for the “word viewing service”. Go to Central Administration\ Application management\ Manage service applications and click on New and select “Word Viewing Service”

7. Create the new Word viewing service application with the following settings, feel free to improvise depending on your environment.
i. Name the service “Word Viewing Service Application”
ii. Select the application pool – SharePoint web services Default
iii. Add to default proxy list – checkmark the option.

8. Make sure that this service is associated with your Web application, If it is not then you can do it by going to CA\ Application management\ Configure Service application association.

9. Enable a Site collection to use Office Web app :
a. Before office web apps can be used office web app feature has to be enabled, you will have to install it on all the wfes.
b. Deactivate the feature “Open Documents in Client Applications by Default” in case it is Active.
c. Go to the web application for which you want to enable viewing word documents in the browser, go to site actions\ site collection features and activate Office Web Apps feature

This should make sure you can open office documents in the browser. IR, Safari, Firefox are supported, hopefully, this blog helps you, leave a comment.