Hi all,

I'm not sure this qualifies as an error, but I found the behavior of
Word 2003 strange enough to warrant a post here (and I know word for
more than 10 years, so I've seen my share of strange things).

The documents are stored on a file server, with many people having
access to them. All the people who normally open the documents have
full read/write rights file-system-wise.

I noticed that sometimes a document would open as Read-only. I've
sometimes intentionally used the "Open as Read-only" feature, to be
able to read a document without locking it for editing by other users
(so I thought).

As it turns out, when someone has opened the document Read-only,
everyone else trying to open it will also get it read-only. You can
see it in the window caption, next the document name, but other than
that, you get no notification, and at first I had no idea what was
going on.

There's no info that another user has the document open. There's none
of the usual temp-files in the folder with the document. There's no
read-only flag set in the file, and you certainly don't lack the right
to write the file.

Is this the way it's supposed to work? I open the document read-only,
and suddenly no-one can write it, and can't even find out I lock them
out?

In my view, opening a document read-only MUST NOT in any way affect
other users opening the document.

What's your opinion? Do you know about this behavior? Is there a
reason for it?

Thanks!

Robert