prevent document from opening when read-only

[mtarr]

We have a number of users with Macs running OS 10.3.8 with Office X.
All their files are saved on a Windows 2000 Server-based NAS. At one
point, when they would open a Word document that was already in use,
instead of opening in read-only mode, it would simply fail to open,
with some error message. I've never seen this error message in person,
by I am assured it happened.

Now, for some reason, when the documents are opened, they open in
read-only mode, without any warning. This confuses the users, who
aren't used to this, and they'd like it back the way it was, with an
error message when the file was in use.

Is there a way to make Word X NOT open documents at all if they're in
use? I understand that this isn't what most people would want, but
that's how they are.

It's not a server issue, as the problem exists whether the document is
stored on the NAS, a local Mac, or a desktop PC. The PCs we have with
Office 2000 generate an error message when trying to open a document in
use by a Mac, but not the other way around.

I removed Virex 7 from the Macs (wasn't up-to-date, subscription
expired, organization moving to eTrust) about the time this change
occurred. Would that have something to do with it?

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi mtarr,

Unfortunately, macintosh documents that are stored on windows servers do
not know when they are already open by windows users. I don't know
whether this is a problem with Windows or MacOS, but that's the way it
works, sad to say.

I think that Thursby's Dave http://www.thursby.com/ may be something to
look into. They may have solved this problem.

-Jim