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Opening existing items

You can open existing Content Manager items from a WebDAV-compliant interface simply by accessing the Open functionality in your Windows application (typically accessible from your application File menu).

Before you begin

You may experience problems browsing for, and opening, items with a name that contains special characters. These problems are due to variations in the way that different windows platforms and applications handle these characters. When naming Publications, Folders or items that will be accessed from a client application using WebDAV, ensure that the following reserved characters are not part of the name:

< & > # % * : ! ~ +

About this task

Filenames of path names may cause errors when you open an item from, or save an item to, the Content Manager. If this happens, use the drag-and-drop feature to save the item to, and open the item from, you client machine. Edit the item on your machine and then drag-and-drop the file back to the Content Manager using Windows Explorer.

The following task describes accessing Content Manager items through Windows Explorer and from Altova® XML Spy®.

Procedure

  1. Access items from Windows Explorer: from the Windows start menu, start Windows Explorer.
  2. In the navigation tree on the left, select My Network Places and in this node, select the WebDAV folder. At this point, Content Manager may prompt you for a valid user name, password and domain. Provide valid credentials if this happens.

    Windows Explorer displays a list of Windows folders representing Publications in Content Manager. The following image shows one Publication opened to reveal its Building Blocks folder.

  3. Navigate through the folder tree as you would any Windows file system, and open a file you want to view or edit.
  4. Access items from Altova XML Spy: from the Windows start menu, start Altova XML Spy.
  5. Select File > Open from the menu bar and navigate to the WebDAV folder. At this point, Content Manager may prompt you for a valid user name, password and domain. Provide valid credentials if this happens.

    The Open dialog displays a list of Windows folders representing Publications in Content Manager.

  6. Navigate through the folder tree as would any Windows file system, and open a file you want to view or edit.

    By default, XML Spy only displays files of a type that it can handle. Of the standard Content Manager item types, these are:

    • XML files (Components)
    • XSD files (SDL Tridion Sites Schemas)
    • XSL/XSLT files (XSLT stylesheet Template Building Blocks)