Strange behaviour opening Word 2007 file by multiple users

G

Grim

We are experiencing some issues when multiple users open the same Word
document concurrently. Below describes a procedure to reproduce the problem
in the simplest scenario.

A document is opened in Word 2007, and then you try to open the same
document in another instance of Word 2007. (Note: you must use two
instances). In this case, the File In Use dialog box appears. If you open a
read-only copy of the document in Word 2007, the document is opened
unexpectedly in the disabled functionality state. Basically you can’t do much
with the document except reading it. Additionally, you may notice that a
Server Document information bar appears at the top of the document. Note This
problem also occurs in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. Note: The scenario
above demonstrates the problem using two instances of Word as opposed to two
concurrent users. However Excel 2007 is okay.

The test case was actually extracted from the Hotfix 959645 article. This
hotfix supposes to fix the problem above along with other ones. We are
running Office 2007 SP2 under Windows XP SP3. The same problem can be
reproduced in Vista SP1 with Office 2007 SP2. According to our research,
Office 2007 SP2 includes hotfix 959645.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959645

Nevertheless, we installed the hotfix to a computer without any service
packs. The problem can still be reproduced. It seems the hot fix failed to
solve this problem.

Is there a new hotfix that can resolve this problem?

Some example of our real world applications that are impacted by this
problem are:

1. Some documents incorporate mail merge functions that a document could be
opened by more than one users concurrently.
2. Documents that contain protected forms. The form works fine only for the
first user who open the document.

What else can we do to resolve this problem without having to redesign these
documents and forms (which we have thousands of)?
 

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