Hopefully a simple one.
I made a word document using open office and emailed it off to someone for them to add to it.
They can open it but cannot not edit it.
I am sure someone here will have the solution of what I need to tick/untick in settings.
Has he saved the document first? I seem to recall that when you open an attached document it?s in read-only mode until you save it. Then it?s editable.
Alternatively, you?re not accidentally saving them in pdf format are you?
Tim
Feel free to email me a test document if you want.
Tim
I'll gladly have a look at it if you email it to me. But I'd generally recommending saving as .odt if you don't know just what the recipient uses. It can be opened by Word 2007 and later.
This sounds to me like Windows-centric and Windows-email-client-centric bollocks. Why should that it's an attachment have anything to do with anything.
If you just open an attachment to an email it is opened in a temp folder and you can't edit it and save it with the same name - in the same way you can't edit an email. Usually you can edit it then save it with a different name though.
Windows supports a security model for assigning a level of risk to a file. The origin of the file influences the risk. Files from the local system are considered least risky, ones from the local intranet next, ones from a general internet source next, and ones from a "restricted" internet sites the most risky. (these map on the the four security zones you see in the Internet Options control panel)
Most email and web applications will save information about the source of a file when they download it or extract it from an attachment.
This information is stored in a additional data stream tied to the file when saved on a NTFS volume.
(Interestingly additional data streams were partly implemented in NTFS for better compatibility with files transferred from Macs - MacOS files have two data streams or "forks"; "resource" and "data". Not used on the mac much today - but the resource fork often holds metadata about the file - such as the app associated with it - allowing it to be opened in the correct app without needing a file extension to make the association)
As with MacOS, Windows does not make much use of alternate data streams on files, however keeping tabs on the origin of a file, and assigning a "risk" factor to it, is one area where it does.
So for example, if I save a PDF file attached to an email from Thunderbird, with the switch on the command line I can see that it has an additional data stream:
D:\Download>dir invoice.pdf /r Volume in drive D is Data Volume Serial Number is A8E6-AE4C
Directory of D:\Download
10/03/2022 00:07 63,866 Invoice.pdf 50 Invoice.pdf:Zone.Identifier:$DATA 1 File(s) 63,866 bytes 0 Dir(s) 224,313,058,816 bytes freeNote the additional 50 byte file "hidden" in another stream called "Zone.Identifier:$DATA". (NTFS files can have any number of additional data streams).
If I open that:
D:\Download>notepad invoice.pdf:Zone.Identifier:$DATA
I see a file with the content:
[ZoneTransfer] ZoneId=3 HostUrl=about:internetThis is how apps and windows "know" where a file came from.
(you can strip this info if you want - right click a file and select properties. Look at the "general" tab. You will see a note at the bottom that says "This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer.". There is an "Unblock" checkbox that you can tick beside it).
For the curious, you can also add your own data streams to existing files. E.g:
D:\Download>echo "Boo" > Invoice.pdf:JohnnyWasHere.txt
D:\Download>dir Invoice.pdf /r Volume in drive D is Data Volume Serial Number is A8E6-AE4C
Directory of D:\Download
10/03/2022 00:38 63,866 Invoice.pdf 8 Invoice.pdf:JohnnyWasHere.txt:$DATA 50 Invoice.pdf:Zone.Identifier:$DATA 1 File(s) 63,866 bytes 0 Dir(s) 224,313,058,816 bytes free
My email client writes attachments to a folder as they are received, so they are immediately openable and editable by applications. And it can edit emails, too. But then I wrote the client, so I included useful facilities as I did so.
That isn't standard though and if you save an attachment from any email app it will then be editable, the issue is opening it from the email app.
You shouldn't be able to edit emails, have you ever had to give evidence on the contents of an email?
It's so incredibly easy to edit an email that I have always wondered about their acceptability as evidence.
Its standard practice. all attachments are unmodifiable by design. They need to be saved as copies to be editable.
Whether it is part of some email specification I do not know, but its the same here on Linux with Thunderbird.
Macs also do similar. There's an extended attribute on files called com.apple.quarantine that contains their Gatekeeper status - have they been downloaded from the internet, have they been checked by Gatekeeper, is it an application that has previously been run and the user approved that, etc.
Theo
Because Office attachments can harbour bad macros and other forms of attacks against the recipient. A weak mitigation against this is that email attachments are opened in read only and cannot print mode. I'm not sure why no printing (must have been a vulnerability once upon a time).
There have been attacks which exploited the preview engine in the past so you didn't even need to click on it to be infected - mouse hover was enough. I think all the faults of that sort have been fixed now.
You have to save a local copy before you can print or make changes to it. I thought that the application used to open it would warn that it is in a read only mode and advise to save it if you want to make changes.
Unsolicited stuff with macros in are almost invariably malware!
Another one I never did trace was that PDFs sent to certain recipients with BT email accounts would be mysteriously corrupted to a form where they would not open. It was consistent about which recipients could not receive them in legible form. I could see the changes in a binary compare but there was neither rhyme nor reason to what was going on.
It was one of those only some PDF files affected but a file that was would be damaged in exactly the same way every time. I never did find out the root cause merely sent them the info in another form.
I had to swear an electronic document was the "original" once. I spent half an hour persuading the Notary Public that I didn't have to convince him it was original he just needed to witness that I was satisfied it was the ordinal!
It is a problem but then so of course are other digital documents that can be edited - text, spreadsheets, PDFs etc. And and increasing one with bank statements, payslips, invoices etc going paperless. The Law Commission even consulted a few years ago on electronic wills: loads about electronic signatures (in the sense of signifying the testator was present and consented) but little about authentication - and from memory nothing at all about cryptographic hashes or whatever to detect tampering.
Good money to be made by expert witnesses with impressive pedigrees?
Firstly try File/Properties/Security and uncheck open as read only.
If that doesn't work then check that you didn't accidentally save it as a template (.ott) instead of a document (.odt).
If that passess then try saving it as an .odt _and_ a .docx file and send them both off to the recipient as it may be that whatever they are trying to open it with is a problem.
Assuming Windows (and that no-one else has already said this), it sounds as though the file might have been rendered read-only:
(a) save the file at your end
(b) find it in Explorer
(c) right-click it
(d) select "Properties"
(e) uncheck "Read Only".
+1
Jonathan
Because my app writes them to files immediately, and because they can be opened from within the app, there's no fiddling about "saving" them first anyway.
There's a whole range of tools available to edit files inclusing emails, so that is essentially meaningless.
It's an implementation detail.
None of the seveal that I've read.
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