XWiki Office

Last modified by Thomas Mortagne on 2022/05/31 10:21

page_wordIntegration of MS Office and XWiki
TypeXAR
Category
Developed byUnknown
Rating
0 Votes
LicenseGNU Lesser General Public License 2.1
Compatibility

Tested with XWiki Enterprise 2.3

Description

This project was once maintained by the XWiki Development Team but for lack of active development has been moved as a Contrib project and now depends on the community for any future evolution. It is no longer supported by the XWiki Development Team.

XWiki Office or XOffice for short integrates Microsoft Office with XWiki, by:

  • Bringing the XWiki addon to Microsoft Office
  • Enabling the Microsoft Office power editing and rich content creation for XWiki

XWiki Office is actually comprised of XWord:

  • XWord is a Microsoft Office Add-in to view, edit and save pages inside Word. 
  • XWord supports the 2007 and 2003 versions of Microsoft Office.

Features

XOfficePrint.png

  • Create new pages
  • Edit pages
  • Download and open attachments
  • Upload attachments
  • Annotate text
  • Handle page conflicts
  • Browse the wiki

User Guide

The Ribbon

After you have installed XWord you should be able to see a new tab in your Word Ribbon UI. The ribbon is the new Microsoft Office user interface, added for the first time in Version 12 of Office(2007). The next version, Office 2010, will have the ribbon implemented in all it's products. XWord extends the ribbon by displaying a new tab, that offers you the ability to work with XWiki.

Ribbon.png

  • The "XWiki Pages" group offers functionality for adding a new page and saving it. It also has a button that toggles the Wiki Explorer
  • The "XWiki Attachments" buttons allow you to attach the current document and download a file you have selected
  • The "Active Document" buttons help you refresh a document and view the last saved version of a page
  • The "Wiki Explorer" group has buttons that allow you to:
    • Add a page to the selected space
    • Edit the selected page
    • Upload the active Word Document to the selected page
    • Download the selected attachment
    • Download and open the selected attachment
    • Show pages for the selected space
    • Show attachments for the selected page
    • View the selected page in the default browser
  • XWord Options is the place where you can setup you connection options and the syntax that will be used when saving pages

The Wiki Explorer

This is the most efficient way of using XWord as it provides fast saving and allows you to focus on your editing. The Wiki Explorer is located on the right side of the screen, and contains a tree view with the spaces and pages on your wiki server.

WikiExplorer.png

Each node in the tree view has a context menu, that works in a similar manner to the Wiki Explorer group in the ribbon. 

ContextMenu.png

How To

Create new pages or spaces

To create a page you need to: 

  • Press the first Add page button on the ribbon or select a space in the Wiki Explorer then right click and press Create new page

    Add.png

  • The Add page window should be visible now. If you want to create a new space then select New Space and fill in the name of the space, then the name and title of the new page

    Add.png

  • Press Add Page
  • You should see a new Word html document. Edit the content and then press Publish Document in the ribbon and wait while the data is being saved

    Publish.png

  • Navigate to the wiki. You have your new page now emoticon_smile

To create a space you either use the steps above or you can use the Add space button on the task pane. Then folow step 2 as presented above. 

Export a Word document to XWiki

  • Open and edit your document
  • Save the document
  • Press the Publish document button in the Ribbon
  • Wait while the data is saved to the wiki
  • Navigate to the wiki. Your document is online now emoticon_smile

Connect to a XWiki server

  • Go to the XWord tab
  • Press XWord options

    Options.png

  • In the Connection settings tab fill in your server url, username, and password. You may also choose whether you want to connect at startup

    XWordOptions.png

  • Optional: Select a connectivity method. Eg: XML-RPC or Velocity services
    • Xml-Rpc(default - needs XWiki 2.0.4 or above))
      • Doesn't require any additional setup on the server
      • Does not support custom encoding
    • Velocity Services(Deprecated)
      • Allows you to save wiki pages both in XHTML and XWiki 2.0 syntaxes
      • Works only on XWiki 1.8

Press OK or Apply

Look at the Wiki Explorer, you should see the spaces of the server you just connected to.

Open and edit a wiki page in Word

  • Use Wiki Explorer to select the page you wish to edit
  • Right click and select Edit this page

    EditThisPage.png

  • Wait while the data is downloaded and a Word html document is created and opened. Start editing the new document
  • When you want to publish the document, go to the XWord tab and press Publish document

    Publish.png

  • Wait while the data is saved to the server
  • If you need to continue editing the document you can do that. Just go back to step 4 until you feel the job is done

Download an attachment

  • Use Wiki Explorer to select the page that carries the attachment you wish to download
  • Double click on the page name
  • Click on the attachment you wish to download
  • Right click on the same attachment
  • Click on "Download file" or "Download and open file"

    DownloadOpenAttachment.png

  • Set the location where the file will be downloaded to
  • Click save and you are done

Handle page conflicts

XWord 1.1 helps you resolve conflicts between two different versions of the same document. 

Every time you click the "Publish Document" button XWord checks for any changes that might have occurred since you last opened/saved the document. If the page suffered modifications you'll be asked whether you want to merge the two versions or not. Click "Yes" if you want to solve the page conflicts.

MergeVersions.png

You can now see the original document, the revised document and the combined document that highlights the changes in the two pages.

ReviewVersions.png

If you don't want to see the source documents or you'd rather see only one of them you may go to the "Review" tab and click on "Show Source Document". Here you can choose the documents you want to see.

ShowSourceDocuments.png

A summary of the changes is displayed on the left side of the word editor.

SummaryRevisions.png

To go through each change go to the "Review" tab and click the Previous/Next Buttons.

NextChange.png

At this point you may:

  • Accept changes (one by one or all changes at once)

    AcceptChanges.png

  • Reject changes in the document (individually or all).

    RejectChanges.png

Development

Check the Development page.

Prerequisites & Installation Instructions

Prerequisites

The Add-in

  • Operating System: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 2003 Server R2, 2008 Server, 2008 Server R2
  • Microsoft Office 2003(add-in under development),2007 or 2010 containing Word and Excel

The servers

  • XWiki 2.0.4 or above for xwiki/2.0 output
  • XWiki 1.2 or above for xwiki/1.0 output

Recommended

Download the latest Service Pack: 2007 Microsoft Office Suite SP2 for the following benefits:

  • Open and save Open Office documents
  • Export documents as pdf
  • Better stability, performance and security.

Installing the Add-in

First you need to Download this setup program then run it.

If this screen does not appear you may need to add the XWord repository to your trusted sites.

Adding the XWord repository to your trusted sites

  • Start Internet Explorer or go to Control Panel and open "Internet Options"
  • In the "Internet Options" window select the "Security" tab
  • Click the "Trusted sites" icon, then the sites button
  • Now you should see the new "Trusted sites" window. Write xoffice.xwiki.org in the test area then click "Add", then "Close"

    InternetOptions.png

    Make sure you uncheck the https verification checkbox

    TrustedSites.png

When you launch the setup program you will be prompted with a screen that looks like this one:

InstallPrompt.png

Dependencies

The Add-in requires some additional packages that will be installed automatically if they are not found on  your computer:

  • PIA(Microsoft Office Primary Interoperability Assemblies) - Installed from the XWord repository
  • .NET Framework 3.5 - Installed from the Microsoft web site

Please be patient while these dependencies are being installed. Depending on your internet connection the process may take over 20 minutes.

Finally you should see the following window: 

InstallFinal.png

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