MS Word Help?

Posted by: Ladmo

MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 03:37

I have a simple document I created in Word, and saved as htm format. I then made that my default 'home' page when I launch IE. It has links for my most visited sites, like google and the bbs. I click on the link and it gets me there...fine.

However when I try to link it to a document on my c drive (or any drive) it just sits there and does nothing.

Anyone care to enlighten me on how I can accomplish this?

Thanks

Posted by: music

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 05:54

You are using a URI of the form

file://foo

right?

That's as far as my knowledge goes. Sorry.

I'm on a MacOS X machine right now so I can't check it further for you
in terms of C: drives and whatnot.

Since MacOS uses a Unix filesystem, where the root starts at "/", the URI has three slashes like this:

file:///Users/user1/Desktop/SampleFile

Offhand, I don't remember how to insert the DOS style C: drive in there.

Edit:
I just got Googly with it.
Try this:
file://localhost/c:/programs/myfile.txt[\r\n]

Also, you probably don't really need the [\r\n] at the end.

Posted by: Ladmo

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 13:24

Thanks, but I am not having any luck.
My default pages comes up with the links on it. I can link to WWW sites just fine, just not to a local document, whether it is a .doc or a .htm file...just does not pull it up. The files I am trying to bring up are on the root of c....

This seems like it should be increadably easy, but my two brain cells can't seem to get it to work.

Thanks

Posted by: Roger

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 13:42

Quote:
My default pages comes up with the links on it.

Where are you hosting the default page? If you're hosting it on a web server, then you can't link to local files.

I just tried it. If the HTML page is on the local disk, then linking to local files works fine -- use file:///C|/Path/To/Wherever.

If not, then it doesn't.

I believe that it's deliberate, done for security reasons. Otherwise, someone could put a link on their webpage and could persuade you to open a file on your machine that did something nasty.

You could try adding the page to the list of trusted sites (assuming that you're using IE).

Posted by: mlord

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 14:12

I don't use Windows normally, but this just looks so silly I had to try it.

I created two very simple .html files, and just dropped them onto the WinXP Desktop. Clicking on one works, and the link therein gets the other one. All with simple relative linking.

Here are the two documents, plain text files:
firstpage.html: Code:


<html>
<body>
<h1>Test Page</h1>
<a href="secondpage.html">Click here</a>
</body>
</html>

secondpage.html:Code:


<html>
<body>
<h1>Second Page</h1>
<a href="firstpage.html">Click here</a>
</body>
</html>

I even set one of them as my "home page" in IE6, which used this path for it:
C:\Documents and Settings\Mark Lord\Desktop\firstpage.html

????
What's the problem?

Posted by: mlord

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 14:16

I can even link to other local documents, using a full DOS path:
Code:


<html>
<body>
<h1>First Page</h1>
<a href="secondpage.html">Second Page</a><br>
<a href="C:\Documents and Settings\Mark Lord\Desktop\thirdpage.html">Third Page</a>
</body>
</html>

Posted by: drakino

Re: MS Word Help? - 25/11/2007 19:19

When you hover over one of the links that doesn't work, what does the status bar say (at the bottom)? Knowing what link Word is actually making will help. Also, you could try right clicking and saying Copy Link or whatever it is in IE and Windows. Haven't used IE since 5.0 came out, so I can't remember what options it had on the right click menu.

Posted by: Ladmo

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 01:00

The problem, my dear MLord, is, as the subject says MSWORD...
Yeah I could have done it with notepad, but that was not the excersise...

Both files are local on my C: drive, as i thought I had mentioned .

Posted by: mlord

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 01:50

Quote:
The problem, my dear MLord, is, as the subject says MSWORD...
Yeah I could have done it with notepad, but that was not the excersise...

Both files are local on my C: drive, as i thought I had mentioned .

The question, my dear Ladmo, was (your exact words):
>Anyone care to enlighten me on how I can accomplish this?

So I'm answering it. Nobody said anything here about "notepad".

Save the file as "text only", and confirm your intent when it warns about losing formatting information.

-ml

Posted by: mlord

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 02:19

Quote:

Save the file as "text only", and confirm your intent when it warns about losing formatting information.

Mmmm.. just for you, I dug out the Office 2000 CD that came with one of my old computers, and installed Word from it in VMware.

I had previously used WordPad, and the instructions given above work perfectly there. But with this version of Word, they do not. Instead, just use the Insert --> hyperlink menu entry to create the new links, give them full or relative addresses as shown earlier, and save as .htm format. That works here.

To link to a local word document, I just used the Browse function to locate and identify the link target ("type the file or web page name" in MS-speak), and it worked fine.

Cheers

Posted by: music

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 04:39

Quote:
Both files are local on my C: drive, as i thought I had mentioned .

So neither my localhost/c: thing nor Roger's c|/path thing worked to find your C drive?

Posted by: andy

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 08:40

For reference I tried the same exercise last night with Word 2003 and it worked exactly as I expected. The links all worked fine, that was using "Save as webpage" rather than "Save as text".

I'm sure it is possible to replicate the problem reported by tying IE's security settings for the local zone, maybe that is what has happened here.

Oh and this is what a simple HTML file with one link looks like by the time Word 2003 has had it's way with it:

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11">
<meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 11">
<link rel=File-List href="C_files/filelist.xml">
<title>C:\test</title>

<style>

</style>

</head>

<body lang=EN-GB link=blue vlink=purple style='tab-interval:36.0pt'>

<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal><a href="../../../test.htm">C:\test.htm</a></p>

</div>

</body>

</html>

Posted by: Roger

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 09:57

Quote:
Oh and this is what a simple HTML file with one link looks like by the time Word 2003 has had it's way with it

Word 2007 is worse. Frankly, if you're editing HTML, there are better tools out there than Word. Including notepad

Personally, I use either Notepad or Visual Studio 2005. Or vi.

Posted by: Roger

Re: MS Word Help? - 26/11/2007 09:59

Quote:
<p class=MsoNormal><a href="../../../test.htm">C:\test.htm</a></p>

Word also does things like this. You need to ensure that the files move around together, or you need to use fully-qualified paths.