Office 2003 and 2007 Office documents open read-only in Internet Explorer

When you open a Microsoft Office 2003 or a 2007 Microsoft Office document in Microsoft Internet Explorer, the document opens with read-only permissions, and you cannot make changes to the document.

This behavior occurs in, but is not limited to, the following scenarios:

• You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from another Office document.
• You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from an e-mail message.
• You click a hyperlink to an Office document, and the hyperlink is from a Microsoft SharePoint Services site or a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server site.

For sites that are not on a SharePoint server, in order to resolve this behavior so that open documents that are in the Internet or Local intranet security zones in Internet Explorer with read/write permissions, you must add the following registry key:

• For Office XP
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1
• For Office 2003
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1
• For the 2007 Office system
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Internet\OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing = 1

To do this, follow these steps.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Important The following steps will have no effect when you open documents and hyperlinks from a Microsoft SharePoint Services site or a Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server site.

1. Quit all Office 2003 and 2007 Office programs that are running.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version_number>\Common\Internet
   
   Note In this subkey, <version_number> corresponds to 10.0, 11.0 or 12.0 for the specific Office version that is installed. You must create the registry key in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree. The same setting under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE tree has no effect.
4. Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. Type OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then press ENTER.
6. Right-click OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

This behavior is by design.

For more information about this behavior in Microsoft Office XP, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: