Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Excel Office 2003 Documents opening as read-only in SharePoint

Recently I've been getting issues with users complaining that their old Excel files are now opening as Read-Only, and that in order to update the document they have to Save-As to their desktop then re-upload - which kind of defeats the purpose of SharePoint.

I've tried some of the recommended fixes from various sites, including the one from Microsoft which says that it won't work for Sharepoint (but other users say it does), and they just don't work on my machine. I don't want to try to do those fixes manually on the user's machines either.

In desperation I tried to find out exactly what was going on, using RegMon from Sysinternals.

What I found is that when a user clicks on a Document URL from the web, IE launches Excel using the OpenAsReadOnly shell command (by default).

By modifying the registry so that the command to Open as Read Only would essentially do the same thing as the regular Open command, I was able to workaround the situation, although for some users this was temporary - the next day something restored the settings back, and they had to run the registry hack again.

I don't know when Microsoft decided to change this policy of how documents are opened from the web, or how it was distributed to our network or our users. There are sites that say that this is by design, which begs the question, why did it work the way it did before?

I do agree that it should be fixed by using the Edit in Microsoft link, which incidentally launches an ActiveX object to open the document in Read/Write mode, but it just doesn't satisfy my curiosity as to how things were before they started working "as they should".

For anyone interested, I am on WinXP SP3, MS Office 2003 Standard Edition, with Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system (KB923505) installed.

Copy and paste the below into a text file and save as .REG:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\OpenAsReadOnly\command]@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\OFFICE11\\EXCEL.EXE\" /e"




Monday, March 23, 2009

Hiatus

I haven't done any programming in a while now. It's probably because the PSP plugin I was trying to make was totally pwned by another person's plugin.

The plugin is another attempt to allow a user to organize games and applications into folders on the PSP, and it does the job in a much better way both interactively and programatically, and I wave the white flag and now use it myself.

It's also because I can seem to find the time I need to really get into programming. I really don't want to break my time down for you in order to illustrate, but four hours of programming sometimes just doesn't seem to cut it in order to learn or make something useful.

Perhaps it's just that I don't have a focus right now.

So I've dropped programming for a while and now I'm going back to playing games.

Recently I've started playing Final Fantasy VIII again. It's one of the RPGs I've already finished, but more or less enjoyed enough the first time around to warrant a second playthrough.

The first time I played it, I was in college, and I only rented to play the game, so I didn't have much time to really get into it, nor did I finish it.

The savegame slept on my memory card until the day PSX emulation became feasible, and following instructions, I made a memory card reader out of a floppy disk connector and some instructions on the web.

The second time I played it, I between jobs and had so many games to play that I didn't really bother to spend the time to get to know the game that well.

I'm playing it on my PSP nowadays, more or less for nostalgia than the need to finish it. I could be spending more time on Patapon 2, but I've grown a bit tired of killing bosses over and over again in order to level up my army so I can go back to killing bosses over and over again.

Maybe it's my video card, but Resident Evil 4 gets me motion sick after a few minutes of play. Then again I was never really a fan of first-person-shooters.

I haven't touched Final Fantasy X in a while. I'm using PCSX2 to emulate it (I don't own a PS2), and fortunately my video card can crank enough polygons per second to make it playable.

It'd be nice to own a PS2 and play all those great games, but I can't bring myself to shell out some money to buy a second hand unit and some games with scratched or second-rate DVDs.

Maybe if someone sold me one for Php 4,000, I'd bite. But that's almost a new Inno3D GForce 9600 GTS DDR3.

Thing is, I'm not even much of an avid PC gamer.

*sigh*

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Hitched!

After five years, we finally got married!

My dear Fransly and I tied the knot on February 28, 2009 at the Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish Church, at West Triangle subdivision in Quezon City.

My father decided to come late to the church, but I didn't let that ruin the day for me. The road leading to the front of the church was torn up for repairs/renewal, but I didn't let that ruin the day for me.

The cloudless day brought a heat wave but also gave perfect lighting for picture-taking. Hats off to the Ariel Javelosa team for grabbing such lovely pictures. Thank you Max!

Reception was held at the Gazebo Royale's Champagne hall, where we surprised everyone (photographers especially) by running down the red carpet to the front of the pavillion where we had our first dance that rocked the crowd and really set the mood. I have Donna to thank for coreographing, and Tina and Onchit for joining us in the dance.

Dinner was quickly served. We didn't get to eat much with all the photos being taken, but everyone seemed to enjoy the food served by Eloquente, while Seren8 played our choice of music.

After the AVPs, the games, and everything to everyone's surprise I sang "Beautiful in My Eyes" and though I botched it a bit at the second stanza, nobody seemed to notice.

The deal was, Fransly wanted me to sing either that or "Danny's Song" (I really didn't want to sing the part "I think I'm gonna have a son" because then people might interpret it literally), but wanted it to be a "surprise", so she didn't know when I was going to sing.

I would have wanted to sing "The Way You Look Tonight" using Steve Tyrell's version, which IMO is more jaunty than the original or Buble's, since I know the lyrics better, I might not have botched it. Oh well.

Hitched! provided us with on-the-day wedding coordination and lots of help hooking us up with the wedding band and other details we missed. We couldn't have done it without you.

Partypics provided the photobooth which doubled as our souvenirs.

Overall, it was the best wedding I could have wished for.

To cap it off, we spent another day at the Linden suites, which I didn't really get to enjoy all that much as I had a really bad cough.

Finally, I must thank my dear wifey for rubbing her nose against mine and stealing that kiss (I know it was you!) If not for that fateful day, none of this would have happened, and I wouldn't be as happy as I am now.