|
[Use your browser's BACK button to return to the PRIME FAQ Page or click here if you came directly to this page.]
We wrote this FAQ to answer the many questions we receive on this topic from our clients and other inquiring minds in the many electronic communities we frequent.
This FAQ is taken from Office 97 Annoyances (by Woody Leonhard, Lee Hudspeth, and T.J. Lee; ISBN 1-56592-310-3; O'Reilly and Associates). For additional information on this title, visit our site's page http://www.primeconsulting.com/annoyances.
Click here to order Office 97 Annoyances from Amazon.
Q: Can I use Office to move files from a PC to my Web site, and does Office support FTP?
A: Office provides two methods for you to transfer files to Web and FTP server sites (such as HTML pages developed in Word, or PowerPoint slide shows that have been converted to Web presentations).
The first is Microsoft's Web Publishing Wizard. This program can be found (as we discussed in the section "The ValuPack" in Chapter 6) in the \ValuPack\Webpost\ folder of the ValuPack that comes with Office 97 Professional. Simply double-click on the Webpost.exe file and the Wizard installs a shortcut to itself under your Start menu (Start / Programs / Accessories / Internet Tools). The shortcut points to the actual executable file C:\Program Files\Web Publish\WPWIZ.EXE. It's most annoying that you don't get any chance to influence the decision where the shortcut is installed, but you can manually clean up your Start menu if you so desire (as we demonstrated in Chapter 2).
The Web Publishing Wizard is strictly for uploading files to a Web site or FTP server. And it works with a number of services that used to force you to use their proprietary software to post your files—services like CompuServe, Sprynet, America Online, and GNN.
You tell the Wizard where the files that you want to upload—like the PowerPoint presentation that you have saved for publishing on the World Wide Web as discussed in the previous section—are located.
To transfer your Web pages, you need to know:
The second method provided by Office 97 is built directly into the common File / Open and File / Save As dialog boxes. As you saw in the last section, this method failed miserably when it came to uploading a PowerPoint presentation to a Web site. It is more suited to saving files-created in an Office application like Excel or Word-to a site, or opening files from a Web or FTP site directly into an Office application.
For example, in Word, click on File / Open and pull down the "Look in" drop-down list. There at the bottom of the list you'll find the FTP (file transfer protocol) options. There is a resource called "Internet Locations (FTP) ". Below this resource is an option "Add/Modify FTP Locations" that lets you add new sites or modify existing Web or FTP locations. Finally, all the locations that have already been set up are listed.
Click on the Add/Modify option and you can enter the information necessary to access a given site.
If you're in Word and want to try opening a file from a site on the Internet, you can create a Location as shown in Figure 7-42. Use ftp.microsoft.com as the Name of the FTP site and Anonymous as the "Log on as" option. Leave Password blank. Click on Add and then on the OK button. You can now select the Location you just added in the Open dialog. Oh, you'll need to be connected to the Internet, so if you are using a dial-up connection, you should log on to your service provider beforehand.
The files and folders that are located on the Microsoft FTP server appear in your Open dialog as though they were resources on your local network, and actually they are—you're just using the Internet as part of your network. In the root folder of the Microsoft site, you should find a file called disclaimer.txt. Select this file and click the Open button.
Next the file is transferred to the temporary folder on your local disk. A status box appears titled "Transferring File…" as the file is pulled down to your computer. Once the download is complete, Word opens the document. You won't be able to save files to this server, though, since you don't have the proper authorizations.
To transfer files to and from your own Web site, you just need to create a Location entry using the proper username and password. Once you do, however, best keep your computer secure, as Office will remember your password the next time you want to access files at that location. Anyone gaining use of your computer will have access to your Web site as well.
Another potential annoyance you'll encounter when using FTP from within Office applications: you are summarily dumped into the root folder of the server Location. When you set up your Location, you can only specify the domain name (like www.primeconsulting.com), and you can't use a URL like www.primeconsulting.com/PowerPoint to drill down to a subfolder. This can force you to do quite a bit of navigating to get where you want to be depending on how many folders you have to navigate. And when you hit a folder that has a lot of files in it, you can wind up waiting quite a while until the file list can be displayed and you can drill down further.
The good news is that there is a workaround. Slog through the folders and select the folder that is your ultimate goal in the File Open or File Save As dialog box (select it but don't open it). Right-click on it and from the pop-up menu choose Create Shortcut. You'll get a message box telling you that you can't create the shortcut there (in the server folder) and suggesting that the shortcut be created on your Desktop.
Click Yes, and a shortcut to your target folder is created. Move the shortcut from your Desktop to whatever folder you favor, and the next time you want to FTP to that folder, click on that shortcut in your dialog. This takes you straight to your target folder, bypassing all points in between.
|
Return to Top