Office 2008 and Network Home Folders

L

Lucien

Dear all,

This is my first message here,

I'm a rookie system administrator of a small office composed of Apple
computers. All these computers are running Mac OS X 10.5.1. We also
have a special (2GB of RAM) Mac Mini that we use as our OS X Server
(10.5.1).
Our server is providing basic networking services (Gateway, Firewall,
NAT, DHCP, DNS, VPN) and it's also an Open Directory Master.
Home folders of staff are stored in the server and get mounted on the
workstation via AFP (aka Network Home Folder).
Everything is working fine so far.

But here starts my problem : Recently we've upgraded to MS Office
2008, and staff began to complain about problems while working with
Word and Excel documents, I advised them to use the latest
extension .docx or xlsx which seems to be more stable. Unfortunately
for me the problems didn't stop. So I've checked it out by myself :

Whenever staff try to open certain documents they get an error message
that says "Cannot access <concerned file>" and click ok. After 2 or 3
attempts the file gets opened.
Another issue is : Right away after closing a document, when staff try
to open it again, they get an error message : "<concerned file> is
being used by "another user". Do you want to make a copy ?"

People from other Apple related forums told me it's a permission issue
but i doubt about that because :
1) I haven't change anything to the default permission settings used
for the Network Home Folder sharepoint.
2) If i use Apple's iWork, i get no problems, files open fine.

Even the newly released Service Pack 12.1.0 doesn't fix any of these
problems !

I really would like to get rid of these problems with Office '08 and
stop hearing staff complains.

I'm also wondering that i shouldn't be the only one having these
problems since Network Home Folders and Office 2008 are commonly used
in business (and my setup is about everything but special).

Have you ever experienced the same issues : how did you solve your
problems, any workarounds ? ...

Thx a lot in advance !
 
J

johnc

Dear all,
This is my first message here,

I'm a rookie system administrator of a small office composed of Apple
computers. All these computers are running Mac OS X 10.5.1. We also
have a special (2GB of RAM) Mac Mini that we use as our OS X Server
(10.5.1).
Our server is providing basic networking services (Gateway, Firewall,
NAT, DHCP, DNS, VPN) and it's also an Open Directory Master.
Home folders of staff are stored in the server and get mounted on the
workstation via AFP (aka Network Home Folder).
Everything is working fine so far.

But here starts my problem : Recently we've upgraded to MS Office
2008, and staff began to complain about problems while working with
Word and Excel documents, I advised them to use the latest
extension .docx or xlsx which seems to be more stable. Unfortunately
for me the problems didn't stop. So I've checked it out by myself :

Whenever staff try to open certain documents they get an error message
that says "Cannot access " and click ok. After 2 or 3
attempts the file gets opened.
Another issue is : Right away after closing a document, when staff try
to open it again, they get an error message : " is
being used by "another user". Do you want to make a copy ?"

People from other Apple related forums told me it's a permission issue
but i doubt about that because :
1) I haven't change anything to the default permission settings used
for the Network Home Folder sharepoint.
2) If i use Apple's iWork, i get no problems, files open fine.

Even the newly released Service Pack 12.1.0 doesn't fix any of these
problems !

I really would like to get rid of these problems with Office '08 and
stop hearing staff complains.

I'm also wondering that i shouldn't be the only one having these
problems since Network Home Folders and Office 2008 are commonly used
in business (and my setup is about everything but special).

Have you ever experienced the same issues : how did you solve your
problems, any workarounds ? ...

Thx a lot in advance !

What about repairing permissions in the machines? I have not read about similar issues, but the "permission" hint you got might not be that far away, as the access issues and can't open issues might be related to permissions.

Is the issue related to all computers in the network - or only some? Is all documents located and stored on the network server? Another place to look is the "2008" folder in users/library/preferences that have been reported to cause many problems, as aslo some 2008 templates.
 
L

Lucien

What about repairing permissions in the machines? I have not read about similar issues, but the "permission" hint you got might not be that far away, as the access issues and can't open issues might be related to permissions.

Is the issue related to all computers in the network - or only some? Is all documents located and stored on the network server? Another place to look is the "2008" folder in users/library/preferences that have been reported to cause many problems, as aslo some 2008 templates.

Why would i repair the permissions if iWork's Pages or Numbers or even
TextEdit can open the documents normally ?
The problem occurs on every computers in the network. And all the
files are stored in the server (Network Homes and Sharepoints in the
server).
 
B

Bob Greenblatt

Why would i repair the permissions if iWork's Pages or Numbers or even
TextEdit can open the documents normally ?
The problem occurs on every computers in the network. And all the
files are stored in the server (Network Homes and Sharepoints in the
server).
I don't know for sure, but why don't you try it? I know Excel and Word write
temporary files in the same location where the input file resides. The users
therefore need read/write access in order to just open a file. What happens
if the file is copied to the user's machine before it is opened?
 

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