OpenDocuments ActiveX plugin does not work first time for each URL

Question

I have a page which displays links to Word documents stored in SharePoint 2010. In order to allow the user to open the linked document by clicking the hyperlink, without being prompted to open or save, I have included the OpenDocuments ActiveX plugin like so,

var spod3 = new ActiveXObject('SharePoint.OpenDocuments.3');

The first time the page loads, the user is prompted with the normal open/save download prompt (screenshot here). This is not the correct behaviour. The document should open in word automatically.

If the user opens the document, the next time they open any document from that same URL, the plugin behaves as expected and opens the document in Word.

If the user cancels the prompt, and clicks again on any link for that same URL, they will be prompted again.

So it seems like some kind of initialisation occurs when the user opens the document from the prompt. But because my URLs may change depending on database values, the most likely every-day usage will be for a unique URL, and opening a document from that URL for the first time.

I have seen this behaviour with IE10 and IE8.

Even if there is not a definitive answer at this stage, troubleshooting steps would be helpful.

Answer 1

You should initialize the ActiveXObject before page load and if possible put an alert to see if it's properly initialized or not. It can be a scenario where request is already processed before object is initialized. You can initialize the ActiveXObjectonce and reuse the EditDocumentproperty for different documents like this.

spod3.EditDocument("http://server.com/folder/file.doc");

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