If you have read and write access to a server on the Internet, you can open and save your files directly using OpenOffice.org (OOo). The following protocols are available to transfer your files:

• FTP

• HTTP

• HTTPS (starting with OOo 2.4)

Using OOo file dialogs

To transfer files using Internet protocols, you must use the OOo file dialogs to open and save your documents.

Choose "Tools - Options - OOo - General" and enable the "Use OOo dialogs" checkbox.

Opening a file from the Internet

Now you can choose "File - Open" or press Ctrl+O and enter the full name of any file that OOo can open. Don't forget to enter the protocol at the beginning of the name.

To open the ODF text document "mydocument.odt" which resides on the server www.myserver.com in the folder myfolder, you can enter the following text as a file name:

http://www.myserver.com/myfolder/mydocument.odt

This is only a hypothetical example to illustrate the syntax - do not enter that server name now as it might exist in real life.

You can also start the full name with ftp:// instead of http:// in case there is an FTP server running at the other end.

Secure file transfer

Starting with OpenOffice.org 2.4 you can also use the secure https:// protocol. This secure protocol requires an authentication by name and password.

As you may want to connect to multiple servers using a different name and password each, we introduced a kind of identity management system which allows you to setup a master password. You may already know this from your Firefox web browser. This new master password feature can be found on the redesigned OOo 2.4 "Tools - Options - OOo - Security" dialog.

Using a proxy server

Some Internet service providers may ask you to enter a proxy server. You can enter proxy server addresses and port numbers by "Tools - Options - Internet - Proxy".

Saving to the Internet

When you open a document using an Internet protocol, that document is downloaded to a temporary folder on your local drive. You can edit the document as you like and save it to any other folder on your local drive.

If you have write permission to the web server, you can also use the OOo file save dialog to save the document to the server. You must enter the full name including the protocol to save the document directly to the Internet server. If you just press Ctrl+S you would only update the temporary file on your local drive.

Using the OOo file dialogs, you can easily work with documents stored on an Internet server. This allows you to use Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) as a working environment with OpenOffice.org.