WD2go (webDAV) and MS Office 2013

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
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…again…

let’s start with a bad news: I just installed MS Office 2013 (working in Windows 8 Pro environment) and, sad to say, the issue with authentication and WebDAV support is still there… in short: there is NO way to open Office files directly into Office 2013 through WD2go web access.

I believe that WD, if it is serious, as I believe it to be, should remove the “PERSONAL CLOUD” caption to MyBookLive. In a cloud environment (SkyDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, etc…) I am able to open my online office files directly into Office.

Yet, Iam convinced that it should take little to make it work: perhaps a tweak in Windows registry, or an Office app… I don’t know, though I have tried and read many articles on the subject, but I am not a geek…

PLEASE let’s solve this!

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Hi, the problem appears to be with the authentication process that Microsoft Office 2010 and later uses, is different from Office 2007 and earlier. If you try Office 2007 or earlier it should open WD2go docs. Just in case Microsoft was the one that made Office incompatible with WebDAV, which is a standards-based protocol.

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I perfectly agree with you… at least this is what I learned from reading several articles and posts over the issue…

Nonetheless, the problem is there, and needs to be addressed by WD… It is rather childish to blame it on MS and leave the problem unsolved… I believe it is a rather important issue: I mean, we are talking about accessing and editing data here on one of the major office software available (and by the way, I just moved to Office 2013 for its awesome support to touch devices, since I often work on a tablet pc, and I am in no way planning to go back… I’d rather move to LibreOffice, which, by the way, supports webDAV)! My next device is not going to be a WD MyBook if it does not address the problem…

…and still, I am convinced that WD does not need to change its wd2go protocol… a little windows registry tweak should do the trick… Unfortunately, I am not a computer literate to try tweaking the registry or hacking Windows by myself, but I hope someone or WD itself one day will tell us how and what to do to remotely open files in Office through wd2go…

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Given that seemingly WD is not giving a viable solution to this issu  (see here), I was wondering if somebody is trying a different method to access their doc/excell/etc. files directly into Office over remote connection to MBL.

I heard about AjaXplorer… anybody tried it out?

I was also wondering about the possibility to use Web Folders (which uses WebDAV)… anybody explored this possibility? (I saw for instance MyDocsOnline storage services that use WebFolders and successfully are able to open files in Office)

Any other software you are using? Thanks for sharing!

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OK, after much searching and seeking help, apparently I found a solution to the issue of accessing Office files straight from the MBL device when in remote (from WD2go.com).

First things first: the issue is known to WD, and it is explained here: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9586 . Obviously WD’s answer is a shame!

The issue therefore is the second layer of authentication on part of Windows. To solve the problem one needs to create a user name and corresponding password for Windows authentication. In order to do so:

1 - activate SSH access: on a browser write the address http://<MBL.IP.address>/UI/ssh and on the page activate SHH.

2 - dowload Putty to use it to access the device sustem. To enter write “mybooklive” or IP address of the device, then log-in as “root” and write “welc0me” (that’s a zero) as password.

3 - to create a new user/password for authentication in Windows, write

nano /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htgroup

and insert a “user_name” (without brackets) on the “admin” line, if you want to access the share as admin. Save.

4 - Once back to the initial screen (the one after logging with Putty), enter the following command line:

htdigest /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htpasswd ‘DeviceUser’ “user_name” (this user name is going to be the password for your user name to access authentication in windows)

5 - you will be asked to enter the password twice (this is for encryption purposes)

6 - there you go! You now should now be able to remotely open any Office file directly from wd2go by entering the word you used as user name and password in the authentication dialogbox.

NOTE: I would not know how to roll back this process, but anyhow it is cleaver first back up the files /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htgroup and /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htpasswd.

You can do this by writing, before changing the files:

  • cp /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htgroup /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htgroup.backup

  • cp /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htpasswd /etc/nas/apache2/auth/htpasswd.backup

I hope this is clear… find more at http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-593394/streaming-ms-office-files-over-remote-mybooklive#post-1631975

Many thanks to Bourgeoa who helped me in this!

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