Getting started with the Microsoft Office Server Extensions Start Page

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What are Microsoft Office Server Extensions?

What is Microsoft Office Server Extensions?

The Microsoft Office Server Extensions feature allows you to use publishing, collaboration, and document management capabilities on a Web server from within Office 2000, Windows Explorer, and your Web browser. Your system administrator must set up Office Server Extensions on a Web server for you. The Office Server Extensions start page is the way to gain access to Office Server Extensions from within your browser. From the start page, you can find, view, and manage folders on a Web server, collaborate on documents, manage subscriptions to documents on a Web server, and get Help for Web server features and other product information about Office.

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Browsing Web folders (Directory Browsing is not enabled on this server)

When you click Browse Web Folders on the Office Server Extensions start page, a Web listing page appears. This page contains a list of Web folders on your Web server. You can view the list in the following ways:

Navigate to Web folders You can easily browse Web folders to view and manage documents published to a Web server. The Browse Web Folders page shows the Web folders under your root directory on the Web server you've connected to. These are the folders that are available to you for viewing, collaborating, and publishing documents. Read and write permissions to these folders and other folders on a Web server are set up by your system administrator.

View Web folder contents From the Web listing page, you can view the contents of a Web folder. Click the name of a folder under Name. A list of the files in that folder appears, along with the file size, creation date, and the dates the file was last accessed and last modified. You can sort files in ascending or descending order based on any of these criteria by clicking the column head you want. You can filter the list by typing part of a file name, a file name extension, or wildcard characters in the Filter on Name box. To open a file, click it.

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Searching Web folders

You can easily search for files on a Web server. On theOffice Server Extensions start page, click Search Web Folders to display the Search Web Folders page. (The Search Web Folders link doesn't appear on the start page if Microsoft Index Server is not installed on the Web server you connect to. See your system administrator for details.) You can narrow your search by specifying a folder, a date range, or the properties of the file you want.

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Adding discussions to documents on a Web server

You can use the Discussions feature to share and exchange information with others by collaborating on documents on a Web server. The Discussions feature allows you and other people to insert remarks into a Web page. The discussions are threaded -- that is, replies to a discussion remark are nested directly under it. You can use the Discussions feature with most browsers, although it works best with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 or later. You can use the feature in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, and in other browsers, such as Netscape Navigator version 3.0 or later, although there are slight differences in the way it looks and works. When you connect to a Web page from the Office Server Extensions start page, no matter what browser you're using, the Discussions toolbar that appears will look different from the one that appears when you start a discussion from within Internet Explorer 4 or later. From the Office Server Extensions start page, type the path of the document you want to add discussion remarks to in the Web Discussions box. The document opens in your browser and the Discussions toolbar appears at the bottom of the browser window.

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Managing Web subscriptions

You can subscribe to a document on a Web server in order to  receive notification when changes are made to the document. Subscribing enables you to be automatically notified on a scheduled basis if a file or folder is modified, deleted, moved, or even if a new file is created in a specified folder on a Web server. You must have read access in order to subscribe to a file or folder.

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Getting Help and other product information

You can get Help for the features of Office Web Server Extensions from the start page. You can also connect to the Microsoft Office Update Web site to get information to frequently asked questions about Office, up-to-date tips, templates, clip art, updated Help files, and answers to top support issues.

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