Opening office documents form a browser

[finite sean]

I am working on an intranet document control system. What
I would like to do is click on a button/link and open an
office document, eg word or excel, write some text to a
specified location then keep the document open ready for
editing. Is this possible? So far all I have been able to
do is open a document inside the browser for viewing but
not editing. How do I overcome this and can I send text
to a document?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
Sean

[Satishpp]

This is how I would do it

1) Automate word on the serverside to open the document and write some text to a specified loaction. (Search the forum for specific examples on Word / Excel automation)

2) Save file to disc temporarily

3) Use a component to read the file as binary

4) write the file to the client using Response.Binarywrite with correct content-disposition and ContentType.

For the first 2 points you can search the forum. For points 3 and 4 check out this example

http://www.developersdex.com/gurus/code/10.asp

One question though - What happens after the user has modified the file on the clientside? Is it sent back to the server?

Hope this helps
Satish