[Peter]

We're having a recurring bug with numerous clients using Microsoft Office 2004 (All 11.3.5)


The documents are saved via AFP to a Mac OS X Server share, the IP address does not change / nor does the network connection (the machine didn't fall asleep either)
and the user has permissions to read/write.
The only fix that we can do is get the users to "Save As" and simply save a duplicate file - really annoying.
Anyone came across this? Its a huge problem over here...

[Peter]

11.3.5 being the Office version, rather than the OS X version.

[Cold Warrior]

Is that the latest version? My Word version says 11.3.5.

[Peter]

whoops, meant that. Edited.

[Art Vandelay]

You need to have a .TemporaryItems folder with rw access on the share point that they are writing to.

[Peter]

if this works I'll marry you, like, seriously.

[Peter]

Hm, kind of works. Some users don't appear to store their Office stuff in the .Temporary location in the root of the mount -- could it be stored anywhere else?

[analogika]

I saw this at work with Excel documents until I did just what you've suggested: saving a copy locally and then copying that over.

[ghporter]

Not all users' preferences are always the same. Office is rife with different ways to do things, and setting up preferences (including what would be a "home" folder) is one of them. Plus there are some preferences that sort of overlap, so you might change something in one place, but only have it do what you want for certain apps or certain documents... Basically, you have to check each nonstandard user's setup and make the permissions change accordingly - or change each nonstandard user's setup to a standard one.

(This applies to Office on any platform. There ARE disadvantages to having too many features.)

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

There ARE disadvantages to having too many features.)

You mention that as if it weren't well-known to be Microsoft's biggest problem of all!

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by Peter 

Hm, kind of works. Some users don't appear to store their Office stuff in the .Temporary location in the root of the mount -- could it be stored anywhere else?

You can also try disabling autosave or changing the autosave location to be local. By default, Office autosaves where the active document is located.

What version of OSXS are you running? What version of OS X are your clients? There were some changes to AFP that affect this.

I've gone through my change logs and autosave and .TemporaryItems is all that I did to fix the problem, besides staying updated.

[Peter]

I'll disable the autosave.
OS X is at least 10.4.9, and OS X Server is 10.4.9

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by analogika 

You mention that as if it weren't well-known to be Microsoft's biggest problem of all!

I beg to differ. Their biggest problem is being a marketING-driven company. Feature creep (and the poor implementation that goes with it) are MS's second biggest problem.

[Peter]

Stumbled upon this. Ridiculous bug in MS Office 2004. Hope this is fixed in 2008.
Which I'll now go check!