FP2000: Link to Office Document Produces Password Prompt If Office 2000 Installed

• Microsoft FrontPage 2000

SYMPTOMS

If your HTML page contains a hyperlink to an Office document and you have Office 2000 installed on your system and are using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, you may be prompted for a password when you try to follow the hyperlink.

CAUSE

Office 2000 can communicate directly with a Web server that is running the Office 2000 or FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions. When you have Office 2000 installed on your computer and you follow a hyperlink to an Office document, the Office 2000 application tries to open the document directly on the Web server with read/write permission. If the Web server's permission structure does not allow you to access the document with read/write permissions, you will be prompted for authentication to edit the document. Clicking Cancel on the password prompt opens the document in a read-only state.

If you have an earlier version of Office installed, you will not experience this behavior, because earlier versions are not capable of opening files read/write directly from the Web server.

RESOLUTION

Use one of the following methods to suppress the password prompt if cancelling the password prompt is not acceptable.

Method 1: Convert to HTML.

Method 2: Add specific user accounts with read/write permissions using FrontPage.

1. Open the Web using FrontPage.



2. On the Tools menu, point to Security and click Permissions.



3. If necessary, select Use Unique permissions for this web on the Settings tab of the Permissions dialog box.



4. On the Users or Groups tab, add the specific users and groups you want.



5. Grant the added users or groups the rights to author and browse this Web.



6. Click OK to close the Add Users dialog box or Add groups dialog box, and then click OK to close the Permissions dialog box.

Method 3: Add specific user accounts with read/write permissions using Windows Explorer (for Internet Information Server only).

1. Right-click the Web content area in Windows Explorer.



2. Select Permissions.



3. Add the specific users and/or groups, and give them CHANGE permissions (RWXD), or at least (RW) permissions, using the special file access option.



4. Click OK to close the Permissions dialog box.

Method 4: Move Office files out of the HTTP location and into a file share.

1. Create a file share accessible via the file:// protocol.



2. Using Windows Explorer, move your Office documents out of the Web content area and into the newly created file share.



3. Return to the Web content area using FrontPage, and repair any broken hyperlinks pointing to the old HTTP locations. Change those links to point to the file:// protocol share location you created in step 1.


With this method, the moved files will no longer be accessible through Web Folders.

Method 5: Turn off authoring on the Web server (Windows NT).

1. Open the Web folder using the Microsoft Management Console.



2. Right-click the Web server content root and click Properties.



3. Click the Server Extensions tab.



4. Clear the Enable Authoring on this Server check box.

Additional query words: front page

Keywords          : kbdta 
Version           : WINDOWS:
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb 

Last Reviewed: July 2, 1999