Office 2003 Web Parts on Multiple Virtual Servers hosting WSS Sites

I ran in a situation where I needed Office Web Parts to be available on multiple Virtual servers on the same machine. I have portal installed on port 80 and several other site collections on other virtual servers on the same machine. By default when you install the Office 2003 Add ins and Web Parts, they get installed in Global Assemly cash and are accessible only on default web site' Visrtual Server Web Part Gallery.

The trick is not too intutive but it works jus fine.

Here's what I did

1. Copy the Office web parts folder from the bin directory of the virtual server on which we've installed the office web parts.. mostly this would be c:\Inetpub\wwwroot

2. Paste this folder on the target virtual server's bin directory

3. Open web.config again from the source location (c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\)

4. Copy the SafeControls entry for office web parts (single line)

5. Open web.config again from the target location (c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\)

6. Paste it onto web.config of the target virtual server..

7. hit iisreset

8. Repeat the steps on each virtual server

you're done

You can download these web parts at this location.


Hope this helps

Parag