Opening OneDrive file in desktop Word

Question

I'm trying to open a file for edit from Office365's OneDrive in desktop version of Word(I'm logged in with my Office 365 account) using ms-word protocol and I have noticed that there are several possibilities:

1. Sometimes file opens in edit mode, I can edit file and by pressing Ctrl + S save it directly to OneDrive without being prompted for any additional actions.

2. Sometimes file opens in Read Only mode, I can switch to Editor mode, but then when I try to save file I'm prompted to specify save location(default location is my OneDrive directory with this file).

3. Sometimes Word asks me to login to my Office365 account(even though I'm logged in with this account in Word), then opens file in Read Only mode and after it looks like 2nd case.

I would like to open it as described in 1st case so user doesn't have to make any additional actions.

My current scenario is:

1. User calls an API to create file.

2. API creates file in user's OneDrive using Microsoft Graph.

3. API returns direct URL to file and I open this file in Word using ms-word protocol.

By direct URL to file I mean: https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/account/Documents/Apps/Microsoft Graph/appname/directoryname/filename.docx

URL to open file looks like: ms-word:ofe|u|<file path specified above>

And as I described at the beginning there are 3 cases how file is opened and it looks randomly for me.

I have also noticed that when I open my file in Word Online(using web url to file) and then I press Edit in Word it uses exactly the same file URL I have created and returned to user but from here the file always open with 1st scenario.

Do you have any ideas why this behaves differently when I manually open file using ms-word protocol compared to Word Online using ms-word protocol with exactly the same url?

I would like to always open file from user's OneDrive in desktop Word in scenario when user doesn't have to make any additional steps to edit and save file back to OneDrive.

Answer 1

(I don't have reputation so I can't comment. I will try again with a partial answer.)

There is always a chance that the credentials will have to be refreshed, so there is no way to completely prevent Office apps from prompting for credentials but it should be relatively uncommon.

As to the issue of opening in edit mode vs protected mode: There are a variety of reasons why some files will open into protected view: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-Protected-View-d6f09ac7-e6b9-4495-8e43-2bbcdbcb6653

If you have a file that seemingly opens in edit mode vs some version of readonly or protected view, please use answers.microsoft.com where the conversation doesn't have to fit into the stackoverflow model.

Answer 2

when I open my file in Word Online(using web url to file) and then I press Edit in Word it uses exactly the same file URL

You suggest that the URLs are identical, but my first thought was that the difference may have been that the Word Online link uses the driveItem's webDavUrl property rather than baseItem's webUrl https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/onedrive/developer/rest-api/resources/driveitem#json-representation