With Microsoft Office 2003 set to launch in Australia on October 22, users are eagerly anticipating its new features. For support technicians, new features may mean new problems to solve, so it's important for techs to be aware of what's different in Office 2003—especially those changes that are likely to result in support calls.
Why can't I open this document?
Users of Windows operating systems and previous versions of Office are used to security features. Most have had the experience of having access to a file denied because they didn't have the proper NTFS or share permissions, and many have encountered password-protected documents or those encrypted with Encrypting File System (EFS). Office 2003 adds yet another layer of security, which means another layer of troubleshooting when a user is unable to open a document.
The Office 2003 Professional versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint support Information Rights Management (IRM), which works in conjunction with the Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Service (RMS). IRM lets the creator of a document set rights on the document to control not only who can access it, but also how they can access it. Copying or printing can be prohibited, or a date can be set for access to expire.
If a user complains of any of the following, the Rights Management feature is a likely culprit:
- Attempts to open the document result in the message Permission For This Document Is Currently Restricted.
- The user can open the document but the Print, Save, and Save As commands are grayed out.
- The user was previously able to open the document but can no longer do so.
Note that even if the user has been given the right to open a protected document, he or she must be using Office 2003 or have the Rights Management add-on for Internet Explorer installed and must have the Rights Management client software installed. If a user tries to open the document in an earlier version of Office, he or she will see the message shown in Figure A.
| Figure A |
 |
| Documents restricted via IRM can only be opened in Office 2003 or later or in Internet Explorer with the RM add-on. |
Rights are set through the Permission selection on the File menu.
More about IRM
For more information about how IRM works, see the Information Rights Management page on Microsoft's Web site. For a step-by-step guide to using IRM, TechProGuild members can read my article, "Control your documents with Office 2003's Information Rights Management".
Help! My formatting commands don't work
Although using IRM requires access to an RMS server, there are other new security features in Word 2003 that can be used by anyone. For example, in addition to password-protecting document content, you can now restrict formatting and editing of the document.
If a user complains that after using the password to open a password-protected document he or she can't type in additional material, can't delete, and can't make any other changes, it's likely that the creator set editing restrictions on the document.
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