SharePoint 2007: Editing a document that Opens as Read Only

When you are trying to edit your Office documents, in SharePoint, they always open with [Read-Only]?

This issue has a lot of articles online with several suggestions. Here's some:

1. A solution I found for one of my customers (IE6 & Office2003):
   1. Open Windows Explorer (not the browser! Can be by opening any folder)
   2. Go to the menu “Tools”
   3. Select “Folder Options…”
   4. Open the tab “File Types”, and it will list a big list of file types
   5. Select the Excel File type (XLS)
   6. Click on the button “Advanced”
   7. In this new window uncheck the option “confirm open after download” (image below)

2. Microsoft Article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=870853 >> not pratical when you have a few hundreds of users in the portal

• Quit all running Office 2003 programs.
• Open register (regedit.exe)
• Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Internet
• Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
• Type OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then press ENTER.
• Right-click OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
• On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

3. Another approach: MSDAURL.DLL rights

http://blogs.technet.com/anneste/archive/2009/01/28/editing-a-document-in-sharepoint-opens-as-read-only.aspx

4. But, what if you are working in large corporation and you can not so easy push this registry change to all machines?

• This article contains an interesting approach, and involves adding a new JavaScript file: http://dotnetninja.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/how-to-open-sharepoint-documents-in-edit-mode-with-internet-explorer-6-and-windows-xp-without-regfix/