Help with Linked Files

The easiest way to use Approver.com to collaborate on documents is to create a document in the browser or upload a file you created on your computer.

You may instead want to use Approver.com to review a document that is stored on your corporate intranet (or anywhere else on the Internet). We call these linked files and they're fully supported by Approver.com, with some caveats as described below.

To create a linked file using Approver.com, follow these steps:

1. Save your file to your network shared drive or intranet web server as you normally would. It's up to you to ensure that all of your reviewers have the proper network permissions to access the file.
2. Create a link using the Approver.com Link to a document page. You'll need to specify the document's name as well as its location.
3. If your document resides on a Web server (that is, its address begins with "http"), you're done. Reviewers can click to open the document from within Approver.com and use Approver.com to comment on the document and approve it. Reviewers will recieve alerts asking them to review the document and you'll receive alerts when the document is approved.

If the document resides on a shared network drive (that is, the address is something like "s:\shared\my.doc" or "\\server\shared\my.doc") and the reviewer is using the Firefox browser, the reviewer may not be able to click on the document to open it. This limitation is imposed by the web browser. There are a few possible solutions to this problem:

1. Move the document to an intranet web server instead of a shared network drive.
2. Adjust the user's Firefox browser settings so the user can open links to files stored on a shared network drive by clicking on them.

You can use the free Firefox LocalLink extension to change the necessary browser settings so that Firefox can open locally-linked files like Internet Explorer. Learn more about the Firefox LocalLink extension.

Enabling multi-user access to files located on your intranet

Different applications behave in different ways when more than one user opens the same file at the same time on an intranet. When two or more users have the same document open at the same time, there's a danger that one user will save and overwrite the changes being made by another user. Some programs (in particular, Microsoft Office) try to help you by locking its files. When a file is locked, it means that only one user is permitted to edit the file at a time. When other users try to open that file, they receive an error message telling them that the file is locked.

Some programs, such as Microsoft Excel, provide features that enable more than one user to view and edit a file at a time. To enable multi-user access to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file on your intranet, you must explicitly share the document. You can read instructions on how to share a Microsoft Excel workbook here.