Thursday 12 July 2007

Issues with Sharepoint 2007 Checkout when clicking directly on document links (not using the context menu)

Today, we opened up a Microsoft Support call for MOSS 2007 because we have had some issues with automatic prompting for checkout not working at all with Office 2003 products.

Essentially, we have enabled Force Check Out on the document library in question. The checkout works fine with the context menu (e.g. “Edit in Microsoft Office Word”), but not when the user clicks on the link directly. It was working before (ie the user would be prompted to checkout the item when clicking on the document link), but now it seems that Edit isn’t the default action anymore. It always opens readonly. In addition, recent items in word now always opens readonly

This is also critical because users can open the document, make their changes and then not be able to save it back to Sharepoint. We really need a seamless solution.

Other people also had the same problem:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2006/05/10/446000.aspx
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1253262&SiteID=17
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1799973&SiteID=1
http://msd2d.com/wb/default.asp?boardid=5&action=9&read=35469&fid=81
But they all were at a dead end. Some even opened up support tickets with no answer.

After ploughing through some of their code (e.g. looking at their calls to DispEx, their core.js files and STSNavigateWithCheckoutAlert() methods) in the javascript, we decided to lodge a support call to MS through SSW's www.ssw.com.au Gold Partnership. We get 5 per year.

One issue the MS support guys had was that they said "we don't support virtualized environments". However, according to this blog, this is not true at all - they DO support Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 installs with Sharepoint 2007
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/01/05/virtual-server-2005-r2-support-for-wss-3-0-and-moss-2007.aspx

We still don't have a solution to this issue - although unregistering and reregistering owssupp.dll
http://sphelpdesk.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!D9676F3678CF7BE7!122.entry made some of the files (e.g. .txt files) prompt the user to check out when clicking on the document link- we are headed in the right direction!

There are also around 50 (!) hotfixes for Sharepoint 2007 available already - many of them for critical issues - something to check if you have any of the hotfixable problems in your install.

Next step is to run sysinternals regmon on the client and server and send it to Microsoft Tech support.

13 comments:

Tim said...

Hello,

Did you get a resolution for this issue? Is there a hotfix? Is there a way to do it "on your own" with event handlers?

Thanks!

Tim

David Klein said...

There is a resolution. It is a registry fix that has to be performed on the client side - http://www.cjvandyk.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=103

Robin said...

Hello,

The registry fix you are talking about repairs the problem of Internet explorer that crashes. The thing is I don't have that kind of problem. The only thing I'm missing is the popup asking me if I want to check out my file. Some of my users have this and some don't and I still can't figure it out. And the patch didn't help me on this.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Robin.

Unknown said...

Has anyone found an answer to this? I've been searching for answers on this and it seems like it's pretty common and not a single person has found a solution?!?

Brian
briannordmann.com

Unknown said...

You must have the SharePoint Services installed. Go to control panel and then select Office and click "Change." Then select add/remove features and next. Check "Choose Advanced Customization..." and hit next. Expand the option "Office Tools" then "Windows Sharepoint Services" and then made sure that
"Windows SharePoint Services Support" is installed. If it is, remove it and then go back through the steps to add it in. You should see 2 services or addons runnning on IE7 if you are in a doc lib.

Anonymous said...

I do have "Windows SharePoint Services Support" installed. I went ahead and removed it and then added it back in. That didn't fix it for me. I still don't get the Read-only/Check out and edit prompt.

Zafrir Benyehuda said...

Ran into this problem with one user who got his machine reimaged. Fixed by Add/Remove Programs --> Office 2007 Pro --> Repair.

Jennifer B. said...

This problem happened to me today for the first time. None of my coworkers have the problem on their PCs; Sharepoint still prompts them for check out or read only. I'm the lucky one with the problem! I tried Add/Remove Programs --> Office 2007 Pro --> Repair. That didn't help.

Unknown said...

Hey,

in our case the problem was solved by removing the sitename from the trusted sites. Once the site was back in the intranet security zone, the prompt appeared again.

Still need to find the out the explicit setting, but hope this helps in some other cases...

Best regards

Unknown said...

I think there are some update packages of the hotfixes in Sharepoint 2007. Including the public hotfixes that need to install in a latest and greatest version.

microsoft office support

Unknown said...

Another Dead message board with the same unsolved issue.

Krystal Spiral said...

Yes all crap - it's a Java add-on issue!

Krystal Spiral said...

Yes all crap - it's a Java add-on issue!