Office 2003 Docs are Read-Only

[Jaminj]

Hello. I have a site with a Document Library. One particular user will open a doc (word or excel) and it will come up as read-only. This seems to be isolated to their pc only. I can sign into Sharepoint as that user from my machine and open the files fine. I cannot open them, other than read only, on their machine regardless of who I am signed in as. They are using Office 2003. I've not ever seen this before and can't seem to figure it out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[tdacquisto]

If you click on the document it always comes up as "read only". You have to pull down the menu for the document and select EDIT in order to edit the document.

Tom.

 

[Jaminj]

Sorry, I didn't specify that. I am choosing 'Edit in Microsoft Word' from the drop-down menu. Same with Excel.

 

[tdacquisto]

Have the user re-set his browser settings. We experienced some real weird stuff here too and found that re-setting the browser settings to default values fixed the issues.

 

[Jaminj]

No luck. Any other ideas? This is happening at sites with Windows XP and Office 2003. I think I'll just have to dig into the Office install and see what's different.

 

[Jaminj]

This issue has something to do with Internet Explorer. I installed Firefox and it works fine. Any other ideas?

 

[philhege]

How are you getting Firefox to read the dropdown menus on the document library items? All I get is the link to the document; no choices for "Check in/out","Edit..", etc.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
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Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[Jaminj]

I no longer have the test machine I was using. I may have just clicked on the link and it opened in Word.

Any ideas as to why it won't work in IE?

 

[philhege]

Yeah. You have to use the Check Out option to make the document editable.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[philhege]

Furthermore, when you edit the item from Firefox, you're not editing the source document. It's a copy. Try it a couple of times and you'll see the file name change in the Word title bar.

You can overwrite the source copy with a subsequent upload, but that defeats the whole purpose of check-out and versioning.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[philhege]

One more note: Office 2K3, being Sharepoint-aware, will automatically open the Collaboration pane when you check out and edit a Word doc. This doesn't happen with Firefox.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[Jaminj]

Thanks for the tips. I won't be using Firefox, I just wanted to isolate the problem to IE. I have tried checking the doc out first and it still won't work. I used the following steps:

1. Check Out
2. Edit in Microsoft Word

Then it would open in Word but say Read-Only on the title bar.

 

[philhege]

Is the user a member of the Contributor site group? Does the document show as checked out to the user after selecting "Check Out"?

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[SilviaS]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;867838

I did this but with office 11 and it worked

 

[Jaminj]

Thanks for the response. I did try that and it didn't work. I opened a ticket on this w/ Microsoft. So far they have not figured it out either.