Replace Webbrowser for opening Office documents

[sten2005]

In have a VB6 application which can display office documents (mainly Word and Excel) using a Webbrowser control as explained in:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243058

But with Office 2007 and later this doesn't work as well because it opens a new window for the document rather than using the Webbrowser control. You can get around this by modifying the registry, but this isn't always possible.

Can anyone point me to an alternative method to display documents?

I need to be able to open .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx and possibly others. I don't need to edit the documents, just view them. I only need one document opened at a time.

I have seen suggestions of using PreviewHandlers hosting or of embedding the application in a form.
What is the best approach, and is there any code available ?

[Bonnie West]

But with Office 2007 and later this doesn't work as well because it opens a new window for the document rather than using the Webbrowser control.
. . .
Can anyone point me to an alternative method to display documents?
. . .
What is the best approach, and is there any code available ?

Perhaps the code demonstrated here may help.

[dilettante]

The best practice is to avoid doing this at all at any cost.

Microsoft once offered an unsupported library containing the "DSOFramer control" that was meant to handle just this thing. Several years ago they not only pulled the library download, but expunged the MS KB article and ran to hide in a corner.

The problem is that the Office Team at Microsoft does not play well with others. They routinely break Windows application rules and create nasty messes for anything that has to interact with Office programs.

See MS KB311765 and DsoFramer are missing from MS site and much other world wide wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[sten2005]

Hi Dilettante,

Thanks for your reply. I'm aware of the DsoFramer control, but I've never liked to use it for the reasons you allude to.

I've never had any problems using the WebBrowser control as a document viewer (Microsoft recommend it in KB 243058). Though with Office 2007 and later trying to view a document causes it to open in Word/Excel instead (still OK but doesn't look as good). You can fix this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927009) for Office 2007 by modifying the registry but you may not have permissions to do this.

[sten2005]

Hi Bonnie,

Thanks for your reply.
I tried jmsrickland's code but (if I'm understanding correctly) it didn't make any difference

Basically what I am doing is:

WebBrowser1.Navigate "C:\Test\Test.doc"

as recommended in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243058 to open a Word document.
It works fine until Office 2007, which (by design) opens the document in Word instead.

So now I am trying to find a way of either opening a 2007/2010 document in the webbrowser control or finding a different method of viewing the document.