Sharepoint 2007: Disabling Edit/Read Only mode?

Question

If I open a doc in read only mode I'm able to press save and then it opens up a save as box and the default directory is the directory on the sharepoint server and if you press save you save it to the server.

This actually makes the whole process not really "read only" mode since I could actually update the document.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening so that if someone chooses read only there is no way possible to updload any changes back to the sharepoint site?

Also, it has been suggested as a solution to get rid of the edit/read only option so that people have to check out the document. Is there a way to remove the edit/read only option on documents?

Answer 1

Rather than relying on the client software to prevent saving, you need to modify the permissions on the server - give the user read only access to the document or even the whole list. That way they will get an access denied error if they try what you describe or uploading a different file with the same name.

Answer 2

The Read-only and Edit prompt are driven by SharePoint and a setting in the DOCICON.XML file. If you have added PDF as a Document extension inside the DOCICON.XML you will need to also add an additional attribute in the line and that is opencontrol=”” this seems to stop SharePoint from applying it's header to open the document.

 <Mapping Key="pdf" Value="icpdf.gif" OpenControl=""/> 

-Rob

(Edit : Sorry I have not tested this on SharePoint 2007 only SharePoint 2010)