Issue deep linking to MS Excel from iOS app - ios

Question

I am trying to open an Excel document that is located on a server. I wrote the following code but it always returns false for UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(url as URL)
I think I am missing some requirement for deep linking to Excel. Why is iOS not able to understand ms-excel:ofe|u| format?
#objc static func openExcel() {
let originalString = "http://s000.tinyupload.com/download.php?file_id=23290165129849240725&t=2329016512984924072514118"
let encodedString = originalString.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: .urlHostAllowed)
let encodedURLString = "ms-excel:ofe|u|" + encodedString! + "|n|TestDoc.xlsx|a|App"
if let url = NSURL(string: encodedURLString),
UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(url as URL) {
UIApplication.shared.openURL(url as URL)
} else if let itunesUrl = NSURL(string: "https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-excel/id586683407?mt=8&uo=4"), UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(itunesUrl as URL) {
UIApplication.shared.openURL(itunesUrl as URL)
}
}

Answer 1

I have analyzed your code and found some mistakes. First, your URL was redirecting to somewhere, as per Microsoft documentation it can't handle redirecting URL's
The URL has to be encoded and must be a direct link to the file (not a
redirect). If the URL is in a format that Office cannot handle, or the
download simply fails, Office will not return the user to the invoking
application.
Here is Microsoft Documentation Link
The second mistake was you are only encoding the URL string containing site URL, you should consider the part after the scheme ms-excel: as a URL and should be encoded.
Because of improper encoding the let url = URL(string: encodedURLString) results nil that's why it is not working as expected.
Here is an example working code:
#objc static func openExcel() {
//replace the below url with yours. may be this one dosen't work
let originalString = "ofe|u|https://pgcconline.blackboard.com/webapps/dur-browserCheck-bb_bb60/samples/sample.xlsx"
let encodedString = originalString.addingPercentEncoding(withAllowedCharacters: .urlQueryAllowed)
let encodedURLString = "ms-excel:" + encodedString!
if let url = URL(string: encodedURLString),
UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(url) {
UIApplication.shared.openURL(url)
} else if let itunesUrl = NSURL(string: "https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-excel/id586683407?mt=8&uo=4"), UIApplication.shared.canOpenURL(itunesUrl as URL) {
UIApplication.shared.openURL(itunesUrl as URL)
}
}
Note: From iOS 9 you must whitelist any URL schemes your App wants to query in Info.plist under the LSApplicationQueriesSchemes key (an array of strings):
For example in our case:

Answer 2

When i try to open the URL in the question above I get redirected to this URL, so my guess would be that your code is fine, it just might be that your excel file you're trying to open is really an HTML page since tinyupload apparently blocks direct links to the files.
Maybe try opening a direct excel file download link, https://pgcconline.blackboard.com/webapps/dur-browserCheck-bb_bb60/samples/sample.xlsx (it was the first google result for 'xlsx file sample download')