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The Document ViewerLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

The Document Viewer allows you to display documents either in a browser within the SAP GUI window or in a separate browser window.

Implementation Considerations

You can use the Document Viewer whenever you want the user to be able to display documents but not change them. Unlike conventional Office Integration techniques, it is supported by the SAP GUI for HTML environment.

Integration

You must be using a version of the SAP GUI with Release 4.6c or higher. The Document Viewer is compatible with both SAP GUI for Windows and SAP GUI for HTML.

The following must also be installed on your PC:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 or higher

  • The desktop application relevant to each document type you want to display (for example, Word if you want to display DOC files)

You can use the SAP Business Document Service to store documents. The URLs or internal tables returned by the BDS can be used directly in the methods of the Document Viewer interface.

Features

The Document Viewer allows you to display documents either in a browser within the SAP GUI (either for Windows or HTML) or in a separate browser window.

Unlike conventional Office Integration, it is compatible with the SAP GUI for HTML.

The ABAP programming interface for the Document Viewer is provided by the global interface i_oi_document_viewer.

The Document Viewer supports HTML plus the following additional document types:

Document Type

Document Extension

ProgID in Registry

Microsoft Word document

.DOC

Word.Document

Microsoft Excel workbook

.XLS

Excel.Sheet

Microsoft Powerpoint presentation

PowerPoint.Show

Rich Text Format

.RTF

The application you have associated with files of this type using the Open With dialog box in Windows

Portable Document Format

.PDF

The application you have associated with files of this type using the Open With dialog box in Windows

Quicktime Movie

.MOV

Quicktime.Mov

Lotus 123 Workbook

123

Lotus123.Workbook

Lotus Word Pro Document

LWP

Wordpro.Document

Visio Drawing

VSD

Visio.Drawing

These are the document types that are definitely supported. It may be possible to display others, depending on the capabilities of the underlying Web browser.

The Document Viewer relies on the plug-in mechanism of the underlying Web browser, which can work out the format of the document and the application it needs to launch in order to display it. To do this, it uses the following information from the Windows Registry:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.***

Content type & ProgI D

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\<ProgID>\shell\open\command

Location of the applicatio n

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\database\content Type

Extension

These entries can be generated in one of the following ways:

  • When you install an application. For example, when you install Word, the file type .DOC is registered to it

  • When you first open a file with an unregistered extension. In this case, the Open With dialog box appears, in which you have to associate an application with the extension.

Constraints

It is not currently possible to edit and save documents in the Document Viewer.

Example

The SAP System contains an example program called SAPRDEMOVIEWING.