Permission issues with Word and Excel files on my iMac from Windows XP

[drschwartz]

When I change excel files sitting on my iMac (OSX 10.5.6) from my Windows XP SP2 machine across my LAN, I'm presented with a dialog with the message 'Excel cannot access <filename>. The document may be read-only or encrypted'. When I respond to this msg, I get another one 'The document was saved successfully, but Excel cannot re-open it because of a sharing violation. Please close the document and try to open it again.'

When I then re-open the file, I get the original messages again and then another 'Cannot access <filename>'.

Opening, changing and then saving a Word doc results in the following msg: "Word cannot complete the sae due to a file permission error. (<path/filename>)". This is followed by a dialog asking "Do you want to retry the save?". Saying Yes results in the Save As... dialog.

Opening files from the same Mac folder with other applications (e.g., PowerPoint) on the Windows machine works just fine. So, this seems to be a problem limited to Word and Excel.

The iMac folder containing the files have 'Read & Write' privileges set for me and everyone.

What's going on? Any ideas how/what to change so that I can simply open my mac-based files from Windows as if they were local (like I used to)?

TIA,
David

 

[drschwartz]

Anyone out there?

Is there really no one out there with any ideas about what might be going on?

Help PLEASE!

David

 

[davidjearly]

So, these error messages are being presented when trying to open the files on Mac OS X?

Do you have any Anti-Virus software installed?

David

 

[drschwartz]

Errors occur when saving

I get the msgs re permissions when I save onto the Mac from inside Excel and Word on XP.

I don't think this is a firewall issue as the issue exists only for these two applications (and not for Powerpoint, for example). Nonetheless, the Mac's IP is identified as Trusted by the firewall on XP.

There is no anti-virus software running on the Mac.

David

 

[wh!plash]

I just solved a very similar issue where people were unable to save files on our Windows server.

Turned out the problem was the hidden .TemporaryItems folder that OSX creates at the root of the share. If your Mac users dont have full read/write access to that temp folder, then certain apps (aka Office) won't be able to save to the windows share.

It was weird, because the users had permissions to the files, and they were able to save on their Desktop instead and then copy them over and rewrite the files on the server. The apps just werent able to save there directly.