Using Office Documents in a Web World

Integrating Office Documents with a Web Browser

Microsoft Office 2000 was designed to integrate seamlessly with most Web browsers by using a technology called ActiveX®. ActiveX documents allow container applications, such as Web browsers, to open native Office files in place.

ActiveX technology combines the navigation capabilities of the Web browser with the ease and flexibility of Office, complete with toolbars and menu commands. For example, a user can open a fully functional Microsoft Excel workbook in Microsoft Internet Explorer. The Excel workbook is an active document in Internet Explorer.

Note   The integration of Office and Internet Explorer is particularly tight, which ensures seamless browsing. These products are designed with consistent toolbars, caches, and Favorites lists.

Office 2000 behaves differently from previous versions of Office when Office documents are opened from hyperlinks. In previous versions, clicking the hyperlink opened the Office document in place in the Web browser window. In Office 2000, however, clicking the hyperlink starts an instance of the Office application. For example, if you click a hyperlink to an Excel 2000 workbook in Internet Explorer, Excel starts and the workbook opens in Excel.

If you prefer to have Office documents open in place in the Web browser, you can override the default behavior of Office 2000 for particular document types, as described in the following procedure.

To configure a document type to open in the same window as its hyperlink

1. In Windows Explorer or My Computer, click Folder Options on the View menu, and then click the File Types tab.
2. In the Registered File Types box, select the file type you want to modify (for example, Microsoft Excel Worksheet) and then click Edit.
3. Select the Browse in Same Window check box.