Why Are Word DOCS Read Only When opened as e-mail attachment 1

[pegleg]

I have recently upgraded To Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, with workstations to XP Pro SP1 with Office 2003.

When I receive a Word DOC attached to an e-mail and I double click on it it opens word correctly but the document is read only.

If I save the document to my hard disc (not usually wanted) I can open the file with full access.

Any help would be gratfully received

 

[fumei]

There is a very simple reason.

When EVER you open an attachment in Outlook, it opens it in the native application, in this case Word right?

Guess what? Outlook does not, repeat, not, load Word with the attached file. No, it makes a copy of the file (a real file, NOT a pointer) and writes it into a folder OLKxxxx. The little "xxxx" are random numbers.

Search for this folder.

The point being is that when you open an attachment, Outlook makes a REAL file, and then opens THAT one, as read only.

Please note that Outlook does NOT delete these files. All open attachments are copied and held. Also note that if you open an attachment, the Recent Files list will actually point to that file. So if you make changes to an opened attachment, save the file, then reopen by clicking the recent files list...you will get the OLKxxxx\whatever.doc

This is a major flaw in version control. If you attach a file, and while it attached open the attachment and change something before you send it, note that the file sent will NOT be the one from the folder you original attached from. It will the file in OLKxxxx folder. They may have fixed this with a patch now, but if version control is important, be very careful with opening attachments.

Gerry