Install and Configure Office Web Apps for SharePoint 2010

Introduction:
Office Web Apps is introduced for the benefit of remote users who don't have Microsoft Office installed in their machines. This implementation guide walks through step by step on: Installing and Configuring Office Web Apps in SharePoint 2010.

Steps Overview

To install office web apps in SharePoint 2010, it takes these three steps:

1. Install  Office Web apps binaries & run products and technologies configuration wizard
2. Start the Office web apps services & create service applications
3. Activate the Office web apps in site collections

Important

• When installing on a SharePoint farm (not a standalone installation), you will need to install Office Web Apps on every server. You can load balance and install Office Web Apps on multiple servers to optimize performance.
• Service accounts you use need to have read/write access to the SharePoint Configuration database and all content databases that house the site collections where Office Web Apps was activated

Install Office Web Apps

Download and start Office Web apps installation by running setup.exe. Provide the product key on Enter Your Product Key page, and click Continue.

Check the box next to I Accept the Terms of This Agreement and click "Continue"

Choose the file location and click on “Install Now” button

Wait for the installation to complete

Run Products & Technologies configuration wizard

Upon successful installation, we will be presented with “Run Configuration Wizard” window. Leave the check box ticked, next to Run the SharePoint Products Configuration wizard and click “Close”.

If you didn’t tick the check box, and closed the wizard by mistake: Launch the Product and Technologies Configuration wizard from Start >> Programs  >> Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products  >> SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard and let it run.

Click “Next” on the Welcome to SharePoint Products window

 

Click Next and click Yes to acknowledge the restart of IIS, SharePoint Administration and Timer Services.

 
Click Next

Click Next

Click Finish to complete the successful office web apps installation
 

2. Start the Office web apps services & create Service Applications

The next step is: starting the required Office Web Apps services from Central Administration >> System Settings >> Manage services on server.

Start these Services:

• Excel Calculation Services
• PowerPoint Service
• Word Viewing Service

Creating Service Applications

Let’s create service applications for office web application by navigate to Central Administration à Application Management à Manage service applications.

Click on New >> PowerPoint Service Application

Enter the following details to complete the creation of the PowerPoint  Service Application.  Make sure you select “Add Application Proxy to Default group” check box.

Make sure the service application pool account has db_owner access rights on the content databases. Click OK

Now, We have the PowerPoint service application ready.  Repeat this step for other service applications: “Word Viewing Service” and “Excel Services Application”

Activate the Office Web Apps

We must activate Office Web Apps on each site collection based on our requirement. PowerShell can be utilized to activate Office web apps on multiple site collections at once!

$webAppsFeatureId = $(Get-SPFeature -limit all | where {$_.displayname -eq "OfficeWebApps"}).Id

Get-SPSite –limit ALL | foreach  {
enable-SPFeature $webAppsFeatureId –url $_.URL }

Browse to the site collection, click on Site Actions à Site Settings.

Under Site Collection Administration, click on Site Collection Features.

Navigate down the page until you find Office Web Apps and click on Activate.

You should now be able to open a Microsoft Word document from a document library on your SharePoint site and it should launch within the browser by default.

By default, Office Web Apps makes documents to open in browser!

Unit Test:

You should now be able to open any Microsoft office document, Excel Sheets, PowerPoint Presentations from SharePoint document library by just clicking on View in Browser, Open in Browser ECB Menu items.

If you see View or Edit in Browser as menu item, your Office Web Apps is configured correctly.

This should render the document in the browser and enable the end user to edit.

   

In SharePoint 2013, Office Web Apps is no longer a service application that is part of your SharePoint farm. Instead it is installed as a separate farm.