Problem opening Office 07 documents in SharePoint 07 library with read-only permissions

Question

The call center managers for my company use document libraries in a SharePoint 2007 site to post training material and information to our phone reps. These reps are given read-only access to the libraries as to not change the documents posted by management, however we find that if management uploads an Office 07 document (either docx or xlsx to be more specific) the reps cannot open the file unless we give them higher (either add, edit or even delete) permissions. Normally we would just save the document as an Office 03 file type, but then in some excel spreadsheets, there is a loss of functionality.

---

Any Ideas why this happens or how to resolve? Anyone else come across this issue? I have been searching but all I seem to find is problems uploading files which we are not having problems with.

Answer 1

When you open a doc/excel spreadsheet it creates a $ copy on the file system, I think WebDav allows word to do the same through SharePoint and thats where the issue is arising.

I've seen users get prompted for authentication but if you escape/cancel it then it still works.

Answer 2

Try giving them 'Restricted Read' permissions on the library instead of 'Read'.

We're not exactly sure what SharePoint and Excel are trying to do when opening the xlsx file, but this solution is working for us.