Opening and Editing Native Documents

After you add native documents to your Web site, you can then start opening and editing each one. Working on a native document on a Site Studio Web site is very similar to working on a native document in any other situation.

The main difference is that the document is stored on a Web site, and therefore the content server. For this reason you must open the document from that location, save it to that location, use styles a little differently (if you use styles), and create links a little differently.

You can open and edit native documents from a Site Studio Web site in the same way that you open and edit a contributor data file using Contributor. You can also use the content server and various add-on components to check out and edit native documents.

Opening and Editing a Native Document Using Site Studio Contributor

• Browse to the web page containing the native document, enable contribution mode, and click the contribution graphic to edit the native document (see Editing the Content in a Contribution Region).

  You can also click the menu on the contribution graphic and choose Check Out and Open from the menu.

  or

• Open Contributor and then edit the hyperlink that points to the native document (see Editing a Link Target and Editing the Files in a Dynamic List).

When you follow these steps, instead of Contributor opening, the native document opens in the application used to originally create the file (for example, a .doc file opens in Microsoft Word). When you check out documents this way, each time you save the document, a revision is created in the content server. When you close the document, it is checked into the content server.

Opening and Editing Native Documents Using Content Server

In addition to using the available features in Site Studio Contributor, you can use the Content Server interface and various add-ons (Desktop Integration Suite, folders functionality, and so on) to open and edit native documents.

To do so, simply follow the typical steps outlined in those products to check out, open, and check in a content item; in this case, a native document (see Checking In Native Documents Using Content Server). You must search for the native document in the content server rather browse the site as you normally would when using Site Studio Contributor features.

Important: When you use the content server to browse a Site Studio Web site, you may discover files that you are not familiar with, such as those with a .xml, .hcsp, .js, or .css extension. These files are used by the Web site and should not be edited by contributors. You typically edit only those files with known extensions, such as .doc (Microsoft Word), .xls (Microsoft Excel), and .ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint).