Office documents prompt for login in anonymous SharePoint site

Question

I have a MOSS 07 site that is configured for anonymous access. There is a document library within this site that also has anonymous access enabled. When an anonymous user clicks

Answer 1

If Sharepoint Shared Workspace is enabled in MS Word this may prompt users with a Windows login if users do not have permissions to access or create a Shared Workspace. Do the followoing to turn this off:

1. Open MS Word
2. Go to Tools/Options
3. Click General Tab
4. Click Service Options
5. Click Shared Workspace
6. Uncheck box that says “The document is part of a Workspace or SharePoint Site.”
7. Click OK
8. Click OK
9. Try to hit a MS Word document from the SharePoint site.

If this resolves issue repeat steps with every MS Office program to eliminate the prompt. (Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, ect)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP010414641033.aspx

Answer 2

Possible cause and resolution: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280

"You are prompted to enter your credentials when you access an FQDN site from a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and has no proxy configured"

"For example, when you open a Microsoft Office file from a Microsoft Office SharePoint site by using 2007 Microsoft Office on a Windows Vista-based client computer that has no proxy configured, you are prompted for authentication."

Answer 3

I've found the following workaround:

http://www.objectsharp.com/cs/blogs/max/archive/2008/04/21/sharepoint-public-facing-website-and-microsoft-office-documents.aspx

To keep it simple:

1. Disable client integration

2. Remove the OPTIONS verb from the registration line in the web.config file for the site

Answer 4

I'm guessing that you use Windows Vista. We had this problem on Vista but not on XP.

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From Microsoft: In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer uses the Web Client service when you use Internet Explorer to access a WebDAV resource. The Web Client Service uses Windows HTTP Services (WinHTTP) to perform the network I/O to the remote host. WinHTTP sends user credentials only in response to requests that occur on a local intranet site. However, WinHTTP does not check the security zone settings in Internet Explorer to determine whether a Web site is in a zone that lets credentials be sent automatically.

If no proxy is configured, WinHTTP sends credentials only to local intranet sites.

Note If the URL contains no period in the server’s name, such as in the following example, the server is assumed to be on a local intranet site: http://sharepoint/davshare

If the URL contains periods, the server is assumed to be on the Internet. The periods indicate that you use an FQDN address. Therefore, no credentials are automatically sent to this server unless a proxy is configured and unless this server is indicated for proxy bypass.

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This is a known issue that has not quite been completely fixed yet. There is a MSDN blog about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/10/19/known-issue-office-2007-on-windows-vista-prompts-for-user-credentials-when-opening-documents-in-a-sharepoint-2007-site.aspx

There is an interesting workaround posted here: http://grounding.co.za/blogs/neil/archive/2008/11/10/workaround-sharepoint-keeps-prompting-for-login-when-creating-office-2007-documents-on-vista.aspx

Ultimately there is a patch that has been included with Vista SP1 but it also requires a registry edit. We just recently got this to work using the following steps on a Windows Vista SP2 client:

Open regedit. Navigate to the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

Create a new Multi-String value called AuthForwardServerList and give it a value of (for example): https://.Contoso.com
http://.dns.live.com
*.microsoft.com
https://172.169.4.6

Then restart the WebClient service.

Answer 5

In the Sharepoint Server 2010, The solution method is a little bit changing because the new generation Sharepoint can not hold verbs in web.config. Therfore, you must change the method. First of all, you open IIS 7.0 and choose your application site. You can see many items at the middle of the screen. You choose and double click Request Filters. In the request filtres, you can see "Verbs". You can add OPTIONS and PROPFIND verbs to a deny mode. And finally test your site. Sometimes, Sharepoint needs to close Client Integration Mode of your site. If need, you can close Client Integration Mode in Central Administration.

Answer 6

That doesn't seem to be it. Once of the documents in question is an Excel file, which would not use the .doc template. Also, in the Document Template dialog, it doesn't give me a url to the SharePoint template file if I create a new Word document based on it. It just says the template is "Normal." I also tried disabling the template at the document library level and it doesn't change the password situation.