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Cannot open archived offline files 1

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roycrom

Programmer
Aug 2, 2002
184
GB
Hello all, first let me axplain my architecture,

I have many users who have laptops(Mostly winXP SP2) who connect to home drives on a network CIFS share from our EMC NAS.

Lets assume a test user called testuser.

Testuser logs on to his laptop, enables offline files and synchronizes his offline folder with his network drive then disconnects. He now has all his work on his network drive available to him on his laptop even when not attached to the network. He goes home, edits a few files, then come back to work the next day and the changes are propagated back to the network when he reconnects.

So far so good, straightforward stuff, everything works as expected.

Now, we were getting pretty full on our NAS, so we purchased an EMC Centera, wwhich basically takes the files from main NAS that haven't accessed/modified for.. lets say 6 months. The files are moved the Centera and are replaced by a "stub file" which points to the location of the full file on the centera.

If I now try to make that file available offline, it should pull the whole file back and place it on the laptop.

This seems to work, but I cannot subsequently open the file when working offline. I must point out that this behaviour ONLY shows up for MS Ofice files such as Word and Excel and to confuse matters even more, only Office 2003, Office 2007 can open up the files fine.
The problem does not show up with image files or with txt documents so I believe it is the way that office 2003 handles offline files annd how they are stored.

Now an extra piece of information, if I right-click and open the properties of a word doc say, whilst I am offline, If I check the read-only box or archive box, I can subsequently open the file, as if the file has been locally modified by the OS and I can then open the file.

Has anyone heard of anything similar? Its a real issue in our environment as we are getting more and more laptop users who are all going to be working offline at some point or another.

I can reproduce this successfully, but unfortunately EMC blame Microsoft and as such will not offer much help in the situation.

I know its a long winded description but I am trying to cram in as much info as possible.

Thanks

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Somethings come from nothing, nothing seems to come from somethings - SFA - Guerilla

roycrom :)
 
I have no solution as such, you may find more help at the Office Forum.


I'd thought I mention these possible not related matters just in case anything applies.

Information about certain file types that are blocked after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

Office 2003 SP3 hurts Access, old file formats

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats



HOW TO: Remove the Read-Only Attribute While You Copy Files from a CD-ROM in Windows 2000 (Q323002)
 
I've looked at most of those sites, installed the compatibility pack, nothing doing - I have no idea what I'm going to do about this - its really frustrating.

Is there a way to trace what is going on when word/excel opens a file? Maybe I can figure out where it is going wrong.

Other than that - they will just all have to wait till they are upgraded to office 2007!!

------------------------------------------
Somethings come from nothing, nothing seems to come from somethings - SFA - Guerilla

roycrom :)
 
Thanks Linney,

Now just have to figure out how to decipher everything that's output.

This is the sort of thing I've needed more than once over the years though, so thanks for replying :)

------------------------------------------
Somethings come from nothing, nothing seems to come from somethings - SFA - Guerilla

roycrom :)
 
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