• Can`t edit offline
• Limited formatting options
• Can`t paste in graphics
• No spell checking
• No ‘draft’ mode

I know what you’re thinking, “why not use code-behind”.  Lets say business-wise, it wasn’t an option at this point.  The user base recently received Office 2007 and now the business owners want to look to upgrade their application to utilize Word 2007 and OpenXML format as well as create a few extra documents to better capture the project’s documentation lifecycle. However, several of these documents have pieces of re-usable information in it.  Oh, and the business owners want to see everything in SharePoint while the users only will accept working within Microsoft Word.

Step 1: The existing situation

So prepare yourselves for a series of blogposts.

• Converting Rich Text InfoPath forms into Word 2007 documents.
• Displaying Word 2007 documents in SharePoint (with images & objects)
• Custom Xml in Word 2007 documents:  A Primer for Modular Document Generation
• Modular Document Generation:  One Approach

Essentially, the problem was when you pasted in a PowerPoint slide into the docx, it wouldn’t render in the web.  After dipping around the inner workings of the document, i realized that the slide was being saved as a .sldx in the embeddings folder of the word document. 

(Embedded powerpoint slide found in document.xml)
  <w:object w:dxaOrig=“7218“ w:dyaOrig=“5399“>
      <v:shapetype id=”_x0000_t75″
               coordsize=”21600,21600″
               o:spt=”75″
               o:preferrelative=”t”
               path=m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe
               filled=”f”
               stroked=”f”>
      <v:stroke joinstyle=”miter” />
        <v:formulas>
        <v:f eqn=”if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0″ />
        <v:f eqn=”sum @0 1 0″ />
        <v:f eqn=”sum 0 0 @1″ />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @2 1 2″ />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @3 21600 pixelWidth” />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @3 21600 pixelHeight” />
        <v:f eqn=”sum @0 0 1″ />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @6 1 2″ />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @7 21600 pixelWidth” />
        <v:f eqn=”sum @8 21600 0″ />
        <v:f eqn=”prod @7 21600 pixelHeight” />
        <v:f eqn=”sum @10 21600 0″ />
      </v:formulas>
      <v:path o:extrusionok=”f” gradientshapeok=”t” o:connecttype=”rect” />
      <o:lock v:ext=”edit” aspectratio=”t” />
    </v:shapetype>
      <v:shape id=”_x0000_i1025″�
               type=”#_x0000_t75″�
               style=”width:182.35pt;height:136.6pt”�
               o:ole=”">
      <v:imagedata r:id=”rId14″ o:title=”" />
    </v:shape>
    <o:OLEObject Type=”Embed”
               ProgID=”PowerPoint.Slide.12″
               ShapeID=”_x0000_i1025″
               DrawAspect=”Content”
               ObjectID=”_1305441816″
               r:id=”rId15″ />
  </w:object>

 The embedded file didn’t help me but the <v:imagedata> seemed promising, and after i followed the relation I found that there was an image1.emf that was in the media folder of the word document.  Below is the xslt that i appended to Vincent’s solution.   

//additional functionality to show embedded objects. (e.g. a powerpoint slide that was pasted into word)
 <xsl:template match=”w:object”>
  <xsl:variable name=”size”>
    <xsl:value-of select=”.//v:shape/@style[1]“/>
  </xsl:variable>
  <a href=”?image={.//v:imagedata/@r:id[1]}”>
    <img src=”?image={.//v:imagedata/@r:id[1]}”>
      <xsl:attribute name=”border”><xsl:number value=”0″/>xsl:attribute>
      <xsl:attribute name=”width”><xsl:value-of select=”substring-before(substring-after($size,’width:’), ‘.’)”/></xsl:attribute>
      <xsl:attribute name=”height”><xsl:value-of select=”substring-before(substring-after($size,’height:’),’.')”/></xsl:attribute>
    </img>
  </a>
</xsl:template>

//additional functionality so that the handler doesn’t choke when it sees the w:customXml node
<xsl:template match=”w:customXml”>
  <xsl:apply-templates select=”*”/>
</xsl:template>

So what am I doing in Office-land?  Some rather nifty stuff.  Expect a lot of posts from me in the near future.

For the Images, Check out TheKid’s very excellent article on making a custom handler for document previews.  He gets around the lack of embedded images.

If you are still having problems with your document now rendering and you have custom XML markup in your document, add this line to your c:\\temp\\DocX2Html.xsl when trying out TheKid’s solution.

  <xsl:template match=“w:customXml“ >
    <xsl:apply-templates select=“*“/>
  xsl:template>
This will ignore any w:customXml tags in your document (how Microsoft says “this part belongs to this custom schema located somewhere else) and render things nicely. 

Just don’t be an idiot and modify the original .xsl.

If anyone wishes to find me on LinkedIn, here’s my profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/christinaodom

Also, I’m going to snipe his disclaimer:

`No warrantees, express or implied, are granted with this information.  Please note that this information is FREE and me being nice enough to give it to you does not mean that you should do anything with it, and that it won’t do anything horrible to your systems.  Above all, I’m not liable for what you choose to do with it. 

As a matter of fact, THIS INFORMATION HAS THE CAPABILITY OF RUINING YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE AND COSTING YOU UNTOLD MAN-HOURS, MONEY, AND DOWNTIME.  APPROACH WITH CAUTION.

So yesterday, one of my coworkers told me the ManageFormTemplate.aspx in Central Admin had hosed.. All we were getting was “Unknown Error”.  So after turning on debug and turning off the generic SharePoint error pages… I got the “object reference is not set to an instance of an object”.

Crap. Something in the DB isn’t quite right.  So I found Tom’s post… yep a form has a nasty artifact (or lack there of in the config db). Fantastic.  So I confirmed with my coworker and he tried to deploy an admin approve form when the SPTimer hosed.. he ended up deleting the solution but something of it remained.

Below is how I fixed it.  Bare in mind I had to step through EVERY SINGLE FORM TEMPLATE to find the one that had throw the exception when looking at the FormTemplateStatus property and delete it.  I knew that this form was not deployed to any sites, so I didn’t have to traverse all my sites in my farm and delete it there.

Below is the code..
SPFarm Farm = new SPFarm();
FormsService FS = new FormsService();
SqlConnectionStringBuilder connectionString = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder(“Data Source=<YourSQLServerHere>;Initial Catalog=<YourConfigDBHere>;Integrated Security=True”);

Farm = SPFarm.Open(connectionString.ToString());
                        
try
{
    FS = Farm.Servers.GetValue<FormsService>(FormsService.ServiceName);
    foreach (FormTemplate form in FS.FormTemplates)
    {

        //form.FormTemplateStatus.ToString();
        //form.Delete();  — THIS WILL KILL YOUR SERVER IF YOU ARE STUPID ABOUT THINGS
    }
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}

Go here.  Now. Thanks Brian.

Now you’re left trying to politely explain why the Fab 40 isn’t a good thing…

Did I mention he released this FOR FREE??

Oh but it goes beyond the normal.  I have a brand new site collection with MOPS extended onto it.  So any thought of corruption of Content Types on the site collection is mute.  So, how did I solve it this time?  Well, when you publish a form template to Form Server, InfoPath calls a web service that does some black voodoo in the back.  What it actually does I’m not sure of, but suffice to say it makes your form template web based, creates your content type and sets your site columns accordingly.  Well.. this web service has a hard coded time out value of 30 seconds.  Yeah. You read that right.  Got that from M$ support.  So, if you have any network issues, this thing chokes and you get your lovely descriptive error.

So what did I actually do to fix my problem?  Rebooted the server.  Published the form with one less site column (I didn’t need it).  It published fine… crisis avoided.

The following code will return the fully qualified URL for your Project Server instance.

String PWA = SPContext.Current.Web.AllProperties["PWAURL"].ToString();