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Okay, I know this is a shot in the dark, but our funders IT department can offer no explanation for a weird problem we've discovered with Word 2003 and the password feature on files and I've run out of tricks at this point.

The Scenario

We have a template on the office managers machine that we use to keep track of money we've spent on a client's file. When the client begin to accumulate disbursements, the office manager opens a template that we created, the template then asks for a password and the office manager enters the disbursement and then saves the information to a new file. When the newly created file is re-opened it requires a password to edit but can be opened as a read-only file.

The Problem

The office manager just discovered today that any disbursement file she created as of May 30 until today does not require the user to enter a password to view or edit the file.

The only thing I was able to determine myself is that if she uses the copy of Word that she can access over the Citrix portal then the template behaves normally, if she uses the copy of Word that is on the local PC then the files created by the same template do not require the password be entered to modify them.

For reasons of speed the office manager would rather use the local copy of Word as there can be significant lag on the version of Word over the Citrix portal.

Any ideas? Has a setting on the local PC copy of Word got trashed? Is the local copy of Word damaged somehow?

NefCanuck

If your Citrix is THAT much slower, there are bigger issues at play. But, your question pertains to Word, so I'll try to stick to that ;)

If the password functionality works as intended then the problem is indeed local to the machine in question. What I would suggest trying (after backing up a current, passworded copy to an alternate location such as a home folder or other network drive) is completely removing password protection. Open the file, and then open the file via Citrix. Confirm that both methods work without passwords. Then, re-enable the password protection. Test locally, then test via Citrix. If you can successfully add the password back to the file and it works via Citrix but not locally, repair or reinstall Office 2003.

I honestly can't remember where the security modules live for Office 2003 - it's either local to each program or it's part of a shared module library. On that note, I'd recommend at least a full repair first, and failing that, then a fulll install.

NOS2Go4Me,Sep 21 2006, 09:54 AM Wrote:If your Citrix is THAT much slower, there are bigger issues at play. But, your question pertains to Word, so I'll try to stick to that ;)

If the password functionality works as intended then the problem is indeed local to the machine in question. What I would suggest trying  (after backing up a current, passworded copy to an alternate location such as a home folder or other network drive) is completely removing password protection. Open the file, and then open the file via Citrix. Confirm that both methods work without passwords. Then, re-enable the password protection. Test locally, then test via Citrix. If you can successfully add the password back to the file and it works via Citrix but not locally, repair or reinstall Office 2003.

I honestly can't remember where the security modules live for Office 2003 - it's either local to each program or it's part of a shared module library. On that note, I'd recommend at least a full repair first, and failing that, then a fulll install.
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Not to stray too far off the topic but yes, I know Citrix on our network has problems. I predicted this from the start of this upgrade project and voiced my objections loud and long, carefully detailing why I thought using a Citrix portal was a bad idea based on the funders apparent desire to save money over everything else. I was summarily dismissed as a "negative" at the time. Now I'm a "visonary" but that helps us not a whit <_<

As I suspected, I'll have to follow up with our funder to get them to do a remote repair to see if that fixes the local problem or a full re-install. Yet another lovely gotcha with the new setup, we can't touch/modify jack squat on the local PC's WRT to settings and program files, so we have to wait on the "Help Desk" to get their s$%t together to do this type of work...

and I'm still waiting for them to send back my PC after I sent it in Monday with a dead HD :rolleyes:

NefCanuck