Word files vs Mac OS X permissions on shared files

[macsolns]

Really need help! Can't solve this one --

1. Ethernet Network connecting 4 Macs all running Mac OS 10.4.6 and
Microsoft Office X for Mac w/Service Pack 1.

2. Each of the 4 users has a subfolder, inside their Public folder,
named according to the User's First Name, e.g., Public -->C, Public
-->M, Public -->E, and Public -->Yon the respective Macs.

3. The respective Public folders and the User subfolder are set with
Get Info so that Everyone can Read and Write.

4. Newly-created Word documents, saved to current user folder will not
allow any of the other users on the network to modify one of the files
and save it back to the original user's folder i.e., If M creates a
Word document and saves it to her Public -->M subfolder then E can open
the file, modify it but cannot save back to the original folder. She
can only save by changing the file name.

Help please.

Thanks,
Ron Osborne

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

4. Newly-created Word documents, saved to current user folder will not
allow any of the other users on the network to modify one of the files
and save it back to the original user's folder i.e., If M creates a
Word document and saves it to her Public -->M subfolder then E can open
the file, modify it but cannot save back to the original folder. She
can only save by changing the file name.

Newly created documents will be created with the current user as the
owner and people in the same group will have read, but not write
permissions. (that's pretty standard actually)
If they have admin rights on the machine, they could change it manually
(tedious) or use an applciation like Batchmod to change it all on all
files of the key folders automatically.
You could even create folder action scripts to change that for you as
soon as a file is added to the folder or run a shell script to do it for
you using the chmod command:
sudo chmod -R 0660 /Users/Shared

(this makes all files and folders in /Users/Shared read/write for the
owner of the files as well as all users of the same group.)

Corentin

 

[Chris Ridd]

Newly created documents will be created with the current user as the
owner and people in the same group will have read, but not write
permissions. (that's pretty standard actually)

That is correct, but not the whole story.

What's happening is that OS X uses a default umask for users that disallows
group write access. Word is correctly using that default.

You can change the default umask using something like Tinker Tool, or from
the command-line:

defaults write -g NSUmask nnn

eg to allow group write access to new files:

defaults write -g NSUmask 002

By default the umask doesn't exist in the global preferences and so OS X
10.3 and above uses 022. The middle digit (2 in this case) describes what
happens to group privileges.

There are loads of articles around explaining how umask works (it is pretty
crude!) for instance:

<http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/umask_permissions.html>

(The article is for Solaris, but there's nothing there that doesn't apply
equally to OS X.)

Note that changing your default umask is *not* a good idea if you're an
administrator, because it could mean files get created by you (as
administrator) that can then get changed by members of other groups you're
in. It is known to cause problems with things like Apple's Installer, for
instance.

I did experiment with changing my umask to 002, logging out and in again,
and then used Word to create a new file - and it had group write
permissions.

Cheers,

Chris