The Art of SharePoint Evolution

Haven’t been able to find much information about this anomaly, so I thought I’d post it..

Scenario: Team site with document libraries. They all use custom content types with required fields including the document’s ‘Title’ property.

Cause: Saving and working with encrypted (password protected) office documents.

Problem: When users initially save documents to the document library, encrypted or not, they are forced to fill out required properties in the Document Information Panel defined by the default content type. Since these fields are required, the document is automatically checked out by default. So far, so good. But when the user tries to check the document in via the client, an error is produced. Only saves will work.

This forces the user to manually check the file in via the browser/document library interface. Only problem is that none of the document properties are saved and users have to manually edit the properties from the browser and then go back again to the item’s property menu to check in the file. This happens again everytime the same file is opened in Edit mode. Very tedious! Unencrypted documents are not affected.

Hopefully this will help others along the way and save you some gray hairs. Anyone know of a fix or workaround for this?

WordPress rocks by the way, typed this post up on my mobile while waiting at the doctor’s office.