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Old 08-06-2014, 08:03 PM
Jaydenc-Fortress Jaydenc-Fortress is offline Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Windows 8 Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Office 2013
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Default Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically

Hello,
We have a customer site with a perplexing problem that occurs very sporadically.



Our customer has a large word document called “Green Book” that tracks all customer jobs, new, pending and completed in a large tabled document that can sometimes span up to 300 pages. Yes we are aware we probably should convince the customer to run an Access database but have not had the expertise in-house to date to date to do this but that is off the scope of this topic for now….

The problem that is driving our customer (and us) nuts is that user A will open Green book quite happily, user B will turn up to work some 3 hours later and get a full read / write version of the document. If user B opens up the document immediately or within a few minutes of user A the document will predicably come up with a “this document is in use by user xx” and give the end user an option to open the document as read only which would be fine if only this would work that way every time. Having a second user open Green book inadvertently as read / write creates pandemonium when two users have conflicting edits to the document as they both think they have the original.

Every time our techs have been onsite we’ve been unable actually reproduce the problem for ourselves mainly because we seldom get three spare hours to wait and the office is flat out during business hours with end users reluctant to spare their machines at the best of times…

The problem extends only to this file, no connectivity problems to other files, email or internet surfing have ever been reported so can only assume the core network is solid.

In a nutshell here is a summary of our customer’s network configuration that was part of a network upgrade done at the beginning of May this year:
N.B. all hardware (BIOS / firmware), operating systems and software has all been patched up to the latest possible versions both on desktop and server level.

HP Proliant ML350 Gen8 Server – 48 GB RAM, 2 TB RAID 10 10K SAS drives on a smart Array P400i
HP server runs Microsoft HyperV 2012 R2 (latest updates applied) and runs two guest OS:
SBS 2011 Server (32 GB RAM) that acts as File Server (that originally shared Green Book) / Exchange server
Windows Server 2012 R2 – RDS / Terminal Server (12 GB RAM) (this server now shares Green book)
Trend Micro Worry Free Advanced Version 9.0 in use with real time scan disabled on servers but enabled on desktops.
New late model HP Procurve Gigabit switch installed.

Desktop Computers are HP EliteDesk 8300 Computers running Windows 8.1 Pro / Office 2013 Home and Business on 4 GB RAM.

In a nutshell here is a summary of the troubleshooting steps / workarounds all unsuccessfully attempted to date:
• Ensured Green Book from is saved in latest DOCX format not legacy .DOC format
• Turned off server auto-disconnect (done on server not workstations) after 15 minutes feature on Windows server to rule out disconnected sessions giving User B’s computer a false impression it is the only user with access to Green Book - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684
• With above setting in effect I’ve instructed an end user to leave a document open for over an hour and do a net files command on the SBS file server to confirm that user A still had a session lock on that file (which they did) to rule out a disconnect giving user B’s computer a false impression it had an exclusive access lock on the file.
• Opportunistic locking on server has been disabled.
• Setup a dedicated server with a connection limit of one user at a time to each of these “sensitive files”. Quickly abandoned this as it was more trouble than it was worth getting user to close Word to release file lock despite document being closed.
• Moving Green book from SBS server to a shared folder on Windows 2012 R2 terminal server (no auto disconnect parameter set). Still has the same problem!
• In desperation I’ve setup remote desktops for all affected users and put shortcuts on desktop a local C drive copy of Green book. Because it looks different to their desktop and Word is slow anyway users objected and I was forced to allow end users again to open green book again from their individual servers.

What did the customer run before and what were the issues with Green Book?
Customer ran a Dell PowerEdge T300 Server with 8 GB of RAM and 600 GB mirrored SATA drives on SBS 2008 and Dell workstations running Windows XP SP3 / Office 2007.

Green Book was always slow because of Word being very slow with 300 + pages of tabled information.
No file sharing / locking issue as reported above was ever reported.

If anyone can share any experiences on this or shed any light on the problem we would be eternally grateful…
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Old 08-07-2014, 12:26 AM
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macropod macropod is offline Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Windows 7 32bit Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Office 2010 32bit
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Your description suggests a network problem, with the networking software losing track of the fact the file is already open.

That said, you might find it useful to store documents intended for shared editing in a OneDrive folder. This is designed to allow two or more people can edit a word document concurrently.

Once you have OneDrive operational, click OneDrive in the header of a SharePoint or Office 365 site, then click the ellipsis (…) to the right of the entry. Then click ‘Share’ and invite the other user to view or edit the document, and click ‘Share’ once more. To add to the list of people already sharing a document, click the ‘Shared with’ icon in the ‘Sharing’ column and invite the additional person to view or edit the document, and click ‘Share’ once more.

When someone invites you to share a document, you’ll typically receive an email notification with a link to the document. Clicking the link opens the document. If you have edit permission, your changes are automatically saved.

For more info, see: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sh...102772333.aspx
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Old 08-07-2014, 12:34 AM
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macropod macropod is offline Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Windows 7 32bit Microsoft Word 2013 Documents open as full version documents on two computers sporadically Office 2010 32bit
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Cross-posted at: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...lly?forum=word
For cross-posting etiquette, please read: http://www.excelguru.ca/content.php?184
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