Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 95547
User opens a file in read-only mode if hasn't writing permissions on folder
Last modified: 2013-01-29 21:40:34 UTC
In a Windows-NTFS environment if you have writing/modifying permissions only for the file and not for the folder you can only open the file in read-only mode. If you extend such a user's rights to the directory where the file is he can open the file correctly, with modifying rights. In a business, multiuser and LAN environment it can be needed to assign the writing/modifying permission only for a file and not for the entire folder. The behavior of OOo is new, has come with OOo 3.0.0. It represents a problem because it limits the fine-tuning of the Active Directory / NTFS permissions settings.
I have experienced the same behaviour. User has read-only permission on directory and read-write permission on a file in that directory. OOo 2.4(.1) was able to open the file in read-write, and OOo 3 can only open it in read-only mode. I assume this is because of the lock-file which is introduced in OOo 3, that can't be written to the directory because the user has no rights to create a new file in that directory. Maybe it is a good idea to revert to the old method, used in OOo 2.x, when there is no permission to write a lock-file? (Although I'm wondering how MS Office handles this, because if I'm correctly remembering this, Excel for example, also creates a new file, a copy of the original, in which is worked. And when saved, the original file gets deleted, and replaced by the working-copy...)
confirmed using OOo 3.1.1RC1 this is a general issue on all platforms and a sideffect of the new locking mechanism. As OOo cannot create a lockfile, it will fall back to the "save" read-only mode.