Office problems accessing network shortcut

Z

Zick

Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2003
Messages
532
Have a very strage issue here.
We recently moved from Novell to Active Directory and use Office 2000 & 2003 still.

We have one user on Windows XP & Office 2000 who has a shortcut in their home directory that points to another users home directory on a different server. When we were on Novell, they were able to open Office products (Excel for example) and goto File>Open, open the shortcut to access files from the other users home directory without a problem.

Now that we moved to AD, the user is no longer able to do this. They are getting an error message stating that they do not have access to \\server\data
The shortcut points to \\server\data\dir\dir\username

We have checked all rights and they are exactly how they were on Novell.
The other strange this is, that the user can use Windows Explorer and open that shortcut and access the files this way without a problem. They can open an Excel file from Windows Explorer and it will open in Excel.
It's just when they try to access this shortcut via Office.
They can use other products like Adobe reader and open files via the shortcut so it appears to be related to Office.
 
Seems strange indeed, starting with the basics... have you done a repair install of Office?
 
Cmustang87 said:
Seems strange indeed, starting with the basics... have you done a repair install of Office?
Click to expand...

I have not done a repair because I can reproduce it on multiple PCs but I will give that a try.
*EDIT* Just tried the repair and that did not help.

Cmustang87 said:
And also, does the same apply to Word and other Office applications?
Click to expand...

Yes it happens in Word & Powerpoint as well.
 
Very odd...

Just to rule out Office 2000 as the culprit -- Have this user log on to a different machine (one that he/she has never used before) which has Office 2003 installed, and try out things from there. See if anything is different from there.
 
PTNL said:
Very odd...

Just to rule out Office 2000 as the culprit -- Have this user log on to a different machine (one that he/she has never used before) which has Office 2003 installed, and try out things from there. See if anything is different from there.
Click to expand...

Already tried it on another PC that they have never been on before and same issue and it had Office 2003 as well. I even tried a full uninstall and reinstall of Office but no luck.
And it's not just the one user. We have a test account that we gave all the same rights to and basically made it a clone of the original users account except for their login name and the same thing happens with the test account too.

This is very weird :confused:
 
Is the opposite true where you grant a working user the same permissions as the problem user, and logon to a machine with Office 2000?
 
Unfortunately I don't know of another user that has this situation and is working. This isn't something that is commonly done here.
 
Just to add a piece to this puzzle which I probably should have mentioned in my first post. The user does NOT have rights at \\server\data level but they do have rights starting at the next level \\server\data\dir.
So when they try to access the shortcut via Office and it says "You do not have access to \\server\data, that makes sense but why do other programs work when using this shortcut?

It seems that Microsoft Office is trying access the shortcut starting at the root and working it's way up. But Windows Explorer seems to go straight to the directory or from the top down.
 
This definitely sounds like a security/permissions issue. My best guess is something with folder traversal checks.

I'd also suggest PM'ing a mod to move this to the "Networking and Security" forum to get a focused subset of members looking at this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top