Disable Office Web Apps and Enable Open Documents in Client Application in SharePoint

Requirement: Clicking on documents in a SharePoint 2013 document library opens the document directly in the browser, Where SharePoint 2013 farm is configured to use Office Web apps. End-users want to open the office documents in client applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., rather than opening them in the browser.

Solution:

Well, This behaviour can be changed at the following levels:

• Disable office web apps in SharePoint 2013 for entire farm.
• Disable Office Web Apps for a particular File type.
• Enable opening documents in client applications at Site collection level.
• Change office documents opening behavior in SharePoint document library settings.

Disable office web apps in SharePoint 2013 for the Entire farm

Go to your SharePoint WFE or Application server and open the SharePoint management shell. Run these below PowerShell commands:

1. If you want to disable office web apps for your entire SharePoint environment, You can disconnect Office web apps farm from SharePoint by removing binding:

   Remove-SPWOPIBinding -all $true

2. Disable Office Web Apps for a particular File type. If you want to remove “PDF Previews” in the browser, you can:

   Remove-SPWOPIBinding -Extension "PDF"

Enable/Disable opening documents in client applications at the Site collection level

You can change the default behaviour of opening the documents in the browser to opening them in the Office client application by activating the feature “Open Documents in Client Application by Default” at the site collection level. Here are the steps:

• Log into SharePoint site >> Go to Site Settings.
• Click Site collection features under Site Collection Administration section.
• Activate “Open Documents in Client Application by Default” feature

This feature suppresses Office Web Apps in SharePoint 2013 site collection.

Click on “Ok”. After changing this setting, when users click the document on the SharePoint site, it will be opened with the Office client application by default. These steps remain the same to disable office web apps in SharePoint Online as well.

PowerShell script to enable “Open in Client” Feature:

Enable-SPFeature 8A4B8DE2-6FD8-41e9-923C-C7C3C00F8295 -url <SiteCollURL>

To disable “Open in Client” feature, which enables Office web apps (if installed and integrated with SharePoint, BTW!):

Disable-SPFeature 8A4B8DE2-6FD8-41e9-923C-C7C3C00F8295 -url <SiteCollURL>

To enable this feature on all site collections:

Get-SPSite -limit ALL |foreach{ Enable-SPFeature 8A4B8DE2-6FD8-41e9-923C-C7C3C00F8295 -url $_.URL }

Change office documents opening behavior in SharePoint document library settings

You can set the default behaviour for open documents either in the client applications or office web apps at the document library level. Here is how to disable Office web apps by changing document library settings:

• Navigate to the SharePoint document library >> Click on “Library Settings” icon from Library tab of the ribbon.
• In library settings page, Click on “Advanced Settings” under general settings group.
• In Advanced Settings page, scroll-down and go to the “Opening Documents in the Browser” section to choose the default behavior.
• To open documents in the client application, select Open in the client application.

The default setting is “Use the server default”.

Disable office web apps in SharePoint 2010:

In SharePoint 2010 days, After installing office web apps, you can enable/disable the office web apps feature from site settings. The same can be done with PowerShell as:

$WebAppsFeatureId = $(Get-SPFeature -limit all | where {$_.displayname -eq "OfficeWebApps"}).Id
$SiteCollection = Get-SPSite -Identity <<SharePoint-Site-URL>>
Disable-SPFeature $webAppsFeatureId -Url $SiteCollection.URL

However, it’s not working on SharePoint 2013 as the OWA architecture is wholly revamped in its 2013 version. If you try to run the same code for SharePoint 2013, You get a “Feature not activated in this scope” error! More info: Deactivate the Office Web Apps Feature on a SharePoint site collection by using Windows PowerShell

Here is my step-by-step implementation guide to configuring Office web apps for SharePoint 2010: Install and Configure Office Web Apps for SharePoint 2010