Recipe 8.5. Configuring Freedoc Access for OWA 2003ProblemYou want to control whether OWA 2003 users can access documents stored directly in public folders. SolutionUsing a graphical user interface
Using a command-line interfaceThe following command sets the EnableFreedocs value on your front-end server: > reg add HKLM\System\currentcontrolset\services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA /v EnableFreedocs /t REG_DWORD /d <value> where <value> is a value from the list in step 5 above. Using VBScript' This code creates the EnableFreedocs key and reboots the server ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ strOWA = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWeb\OWA\" strFreedoc = strOWA & "EnableFreedocs" ' ------ END CONFIGURATION --------- Set objWSH = wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") objWSH.RegWrite strFreedoc, 3, "REG_DWORD" WScript.echo "Successfully created key" DiscussionExchange has long allowed you to store documents directly in public foldersnot as attachments to a public folder post, but in the same way that you'd put a document in a filesystem folder. These documents are called freedocs and have a message class of IPM.Document (instead of the IPM.Post type used for regular postings). OWA 2003 changed the way that OWA users interact with them. In OWA 5.5 and OWA 2000, users could directly open freedocs; OWA 2003 changed this behavior because freedocs might contain macro code that would be executed on the OWA machine when the document was opened. However, this default restriction is a serious inconvenience for sites that use a lot of freedocs, so Microsoft thoughtfully provided a way to turn it off. The default setting is safer, and you should leave it alone unless you actually need to grant your users access to freedocs. In that case, the next safest approach is to enable freedoc access only from back-end servers. See AlsoMS KB 834743 ("HTTP 403 (Forbidden)" error message when Exchange 2003 users try to use Outlook Web Access to access a freedoc that is located in a public folder) |