We recently upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2010. Everything has been very smooth with the WSS 3.0/Office 2010 interactions except for one annoying new feature.
All our document libraries require an item be checked out before editing. This allows only certain users to edit the documents (mostly Word forms) and keep a version history. With Office 2003 it also allowed non-edit capable users to click on
a document, it downloaded a copy, they edited it, then printed and closed without saving. They never had any need for the ability to check something out.
That is the exact interaction I'm looking for now. Instead, when a non-edit capable user clicks a document it opens but then an Office prompt says "before you can edit this server document you must check it out". We don't want them
checking it out. They just want to edit it, print, and close without saving anything.
I know the users can click the file, send to, download a copy to get this functionality back. The problem is that you don't get those options when you use SharePoint search to find a document. It only gives you a direct link to the file.
The users are having to follow the search URL manually to find the document in the correct library, send to, download a copy.
So what am I asking for?
Is there a way to force all documents opened from WSS 3.0 to automatically download a copy? That way if someone (a non-edit capable user) searches for a document they can open, edit, and print without saving or having to check it out.
