N
nathanlh
I’m posting this question in the Word forum, but this actually applies to all
Microsoft Office apps.
When anybody edits a Word document they do not own but have Modify
permissions to, the NTFS owner changes. This behavior occurs with all
Microsoft Office apps, but is not exhibited by some apps like notepad. I
believe strongly this is because Word actually deletes the original file and
then saves the edited document with the same name. Since the file is
essentially created by the user performing the edit, NTFS ownership is
assigned to that user. I have tried two workarounds with unacceptable
results.
To understand why this is a problem let me give you the full details of the
setup. I work for a school district and have created classroom shares for
every teacher. Students are supposed to save files under their teachers’
folders. Students are not able to read or modify other students’ work.
Therefore, they have the permissions to Create Files, but no explicit
permissions to read or modify other files. I have assigned “Creator Ownerâ€
Modify permissions; therefore they can read and modify their own work by
virtue of being the owner. Teachers have Modify permissions to student
documents so they can review and grade students’ work. Some teachers want to
add comments and make corrections and then have their students review the
edits. However, once a teacher has edited and saved a student’s Office
document, that teacher is the owner and that student no longer has any
permission to it.
If I give the teachers Read, Write, and Execute permissions instead of
Modify (Modify is these plus delete) then Word will modify the contents of
the file rather than replace it. With this workaround, students retain
ownership, and that’s great, except now the teachers can’t delete any of the
students’ documents and that is unacceptable.
The other workaround I attempted was to give teachers all Modify permissions
at the folder level except create files because they really don’t need to
create files anyway. Therefore, they could modify an Office document or
delete it but could not replace it with a new one. This works with plain
text files and notepad, but office pukes and claims it doesn’t have access.
The question then is, is there anyway to configure Office so that it is
forced to modify a document rather than replace it so that ownership remains
intact? Does office 2007 suffer from the same shortcoming?
Microsoft Office apps.
When anybody edits a Word document they do not own but have Modify
permissions to, the NTFS owner changes. This behavior occurs with all
Microsoft Office apps, but is not exhibited by some apps like notepad. I
believe strongly this is because Word actually deletes the original file and
then saves the edited document with the same name. Since the file is
essentially created by the user performing the edit, NTFS ownership is
assigned to that user. I have tried two workarounds with unacceptable
results.
To understand why this is a problem let me give you the full details of the
setup. I work for a school district and have created classroom shares for
every teacher. Students are supposed to save files under their teachers’
folders. Students are not able to read or modify other students’ work.
Therefore, they have the permissions to Create Files, but no explicit
permissions to read or modify other files. I have assigned “Creator Ownerâ€
Modify permissions; therefore they can read and modify their own work by
virtue of being the owner. Teachers have Modify permissions to student
documents so they can review and grade students’ work. Some teachers want to
add comments and make corrections and then have their students review the
edits. However, once a teacher has edited and saved a student’s Office
document, that teacher is the owner and that student no longer has any
permission to it.
If I give the teachers Read, Write, and Execute permissions instead of
Modify (Modify is these plus delete) then Word will modify the contents of
the file rather than replace it. With this workaround, students retain
ownership, and that’s great, except now the teachers can’t delete any of the
students’ documents and that is unacceptable.
The other workaround I attempted was to give teachers all Modify permissions
at the folder level except create files because they really don’t need to
create files anyway. Therefore, they could modify an Office document or
delete it but could not replace it with a new one. This works with plain
text files and notepad, but office pukes and claims it doesn’t have access.
The question then is, is there anyway to configure Office so that it is
forced to modify a document rather than replace it so that ownership remains
intact? Does office 2007 suffer from the same shortcoming?