Forum Discussion

NiclasDahl's avatar
NiclasDahl
Brass Contributor
Aug 06, 2019

Enable user specific preference for open documents in browser or desktop

Since there is a varying degree of acceptance (mostly negative) of the webversions of word, excel and powerpoint, at least in my organisations, it would be nice if it was possible to enable a user specific preference for opening documents in either desktop client or browser. From what I've gathered, today it is only possible to manage this as an on/off setting for all users in a site collection in Sharepoint.

 

Don't know exactly how to solve this, but one thing that springs to mind, if possible, would be to add a "user preference"-option and when that is set, then it would refer to the individual user's personal onedrive setting to determine if it should open in browser or desktop?

 

App
Document Library
files
onedrive
SharePoint Online

7 Replies

    • ChrisWebbTech's avatar
      ChrisWebbTech
      MVP
      Aug 06, 2019
      Actually, seems like that just means you can paste URL's into the desktop app and open directly but pretty sure that's always been the case.... .not sure what this exactly is, but hopefully it's something similar to what you are wanting lol....
      • NiclasDahl's avatar
        NiclasDahl
        Brass Contributor
        Aug 07, 2019

        ChrisWebbTech Yeah, doesn't seem like the feature i am imagining. I interpret this as if you in a desktop client, and there is a link to an item either in the text or perhaps as an attachment in a mail, you get the option to either open it in the desktop client instead of it open in the browser. This is nice of course, since if you are already in a desktop environment you probably want the option to stay there if you wish... 🙂

  • MagnusGoksoyrOLDProfile's avatar
    MagnusGoksoyrOLDProfile
    Bronze Contributor
    Aug 06, 2019

    NiclasDahl There is no way to set this pr user (at least not without any advanced scripting). I have also gotten this question many times and i always recommend the users to right-click on the filename and choose open in the client version. Often they get used to that very fast.

    Regards, Magnus

     

    • NiclasDahl's avatar
      NiclasDahl
      Brass Contributor
      Aug 06, 2019

      MagnusGoksoyrOLDProfile 

       

      Thanks for your reply, that's my usual go to as well, I was just thinking that it would be a nice feature to have 🙂

      • jcgonzalezmartin's avatar
        jcgonzalezmartin
        MVP
        Aug 06, 2019
        Then you should go to SharePoint user voice, check if the idea is there and if not, just post it and in both cases vote for it so the SharePoint Team can evaluate to implement this feature in the future