Opening documents

Note:

This topic relates to the Cross-platform MS Office Add-in. For details on using the Office (Win) Add-in, see Office (Win) Add-in.

Using the Office Add-in you can:

  • Open the latest version of an existing Cognidox document for editing.

  • Open a brand new empty Cognidox document, complete with ready-made metadata fields (so you can enter things like the CogniDox_Partnum field).

There are several ways to open an existing Cognidox document using the Office Add-in:

  1. Open an Office application and display the Cognidox Search tab.

  2. Type a search term and press Return.

  3. Do one of the following

    • Right-click on a result entry and choose Open from the context menu.

      The option is greyed out if, for example, you're currently using Word and the document is an Excel spreadsheet.

    • Double-click on a file in the search results.

This opens the selected Cognidox document in the current Office application.

Note:

This connects to your Cognidox server. You might be prompted to sign in with your Cognidox username and password.

  1. Open an Office application and display the Browse tab.

  2. Navigate to the document you want to open.

  3. Right-click on a document and choose an option from the context menu.

    • Open: Opens the selected Cognidox document in the current Office application (the option is greyed out if, for example, you're currently using Word and the document is an Excel spreadsheet).

    • Open in Browser: Opens the selected CognidoxDocument Details page in a web browser.

      Note:

      This connects to your Cognidox server. You might be prompted to sign in with your Cognidox username and password.

You can also double-click on a document in the Search tab to open it.

If you just open a completely new blank document in an Office application (without using the Office Add-in or the Cognidox web interface), none of the CogniDox_… metadata fields exist. You would have to enter them manually using field codes.

Note:

You should avoid manually setting the values of Cognidox_ properties, as these will be overridden when you save the file to Cognidox.

However, you can use the Office Add-in to create a document that, while it is empty in the sense that it has no visible content, it does have some CogniDox_… custom properties predefined.

This means you can create the empty document and immediately do things like insert the CogniDox_Partnum field. This can be very useful if you’re about to start building a template.

To do this:

  1. If necessary, create a new document part number in your chosen category.

    See Creating a new document part number.

  2. Right-click on the document part number in the Browse tab and choose New > Empty Document.

    A new document will open in the current Office application.

  3. Choose Insert > Quick Parts > Field.

    The Field dialog is displayed.

  4. Choose the field name DocProperty and whichever property is required.

  5. Click OK to insert the field into the document.

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