Managing Microsoft documents inside SharePoint document library will behave differently according to the browser vender

Question

I have a Document library inside my publishing site collection. now when the users clicks on any MS office documents inside the document library they will get different behaviors based on the browser type,as follow:-

On IE,

• When the user clicks on a document they will get the following dialog box:-

• If I check “Read-only”, the word document will open locally .

• Then I can edit the word document (after clicking on the "Edit Document" button ) and save the changes back to the SP server.

On Chrome

• When I click on a document it will open locally as normal document.

• but if I save the changes it will not be save to the SharePoint server.

On the other hand , if I select the document and I click on “Edit” from the drop down list, the word document will open locally and when I save the changes it will be send to the SharePoint server.

So can anyone advice why I am having different behaviors based on the browser type? the IE behavior seems the most appropriate . but is there a way to make the behavior some how standard?and are there any plug-ins to install inside Chrome to have similar behavior as IE?

Regards

Answer 1

As you mentioned, "To open the file in Office client application you use the Edit link in the preview box no more “Edit in Microsoft Word”.

This is the way to open/edit document into the Chrome Browser. As these browser supported but you will still face some difficulties as compare to IE. I would recommend always use IE unless their is requirement.

Also try the below extension, may help you solving the issue.

Installing the Chrome extension IE Tab did the job for me.

It has the ability to auto-detect URLs so whenever I browse to our SharePoint it emulates Internet Explorer. Finally I can open Office documents directly from Chrome.

You can install IE Tab for FireFox too.

Answer 2

SharePoint is not be blamed for the varying behavior but it is the browsers. The browsers cannot be completely uniform in features and functions. Each has its own capabilities.

The behavior also changes when using a different SharePoint and browser versions. The Open Document pop up we encounter only in IE browser. But we never encounter it in Chrome, FireFox or Safari. Earlier SharePoint 2010 was not fully compatible with Chrome and FireFox but SharePoint 2013 has come with a lot of improvements and good cross-browser support that were missing in SP 2010.

In SP 2010, the Chrome use to download the document directly from document library when clicked on it but this behavior has changed in SP 2013.

This is a fact we have to accept that each browser has its own features and identity where some features may remain same to offer compatibility with SharePoint.

As you rightly mentioned in last statement... yes IE is the most compatible browser to work with SharePoint. Microsoft highly recommends to use IE browser when using SharePoint but at the same time does not restrict using other browsers like Chrome and FireFox. Chrome and FireFox, etc... will lack some compatibility features when using SharePoint but IE always fully support it since both IE and SharePoint belongs to Microsoft Products.