How to create a HTML link which forces MS Word to edit document on webdav server

Question

Let's suppose that I have WebDAV-enabled server, where I have bunch of Office documents. I'd like to generate webpage which has link to document such that clicking on the link will open Microsoft Word. Word will in turn download document from WebDAV server, and when user finishes editing document, MS Word will upload it back.

I know that MS Word (and other Office programs) support editing of documents stored on WebDAV server. What I don't know, is how to generate link which will trigger MS Word to download this document by itself.

Is it possible? Maybe using some special scheme?

Answer 1

Ummm, you could also use something like this:

<a href="ms-word:ofe|u|http://some_WebDav_enabled_address.com/some_Word_document.docx">Open Document in Word</a>

The difference from the above answers is that this would no longer require ActiveX and it will work at least in IE 8+, Chrome and Firefox, as long as it is opened from a Windows machine, for Office 2010+ (not 100% sure about this one though).

Explanation: the ms-word:ofe part is a protocol that gets installed on the client machine when Office is installed. I don't know exactly what the |u| part does.