How to open a link in the "standard browser" from an Office Addin

Question

It seems since Edge is now in place to render the Office.js based Office Addin we can't "force" the system to open a standard browser window.

Scenario:

Our Addin is hosted from https://company.com/webapp/officeaddin We would like to add a link which points to http://company.com/webapp/something and this should be opened in the normal browser.

Problem:

With the current Office.js release it always opens a embedded browser window. In theory this is nice, but unfortunately we have a download section there, where the user can initiate a typical file download and this is not working inside this embedded browser window.

The link is created like this:

<a target="_blank" href="https://company.com/webapp/something" class="btn btn-default btn-block"><i class="fa fa-link"></i> TEXT</a>

Is it possible to open the standard browser instead of this embedded browser from an Office Addin?

If not: Is there a way to "detect" that this the website is opened with this embedded browser so that we can avoid any links to the download stuff?

Answer 1

You can use Office API to open in a browser window.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/javascript/api/office/office.ui?view=common-js-preview#office-office-ui-openbrowserwindow-member(1)

Answer 2

I'm not entirely clear on your scenario, but does this new troubleshooting note published last week help any?

Edge browser - Get errors trying to download PDF file

Answer 3

have you tried using window.open(""). this should open the link in the default browser.