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Office Documents missing properties missing: SharePoint 2010

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Issue:  A user has a issue saying whenever they save a password protected document within SharePoint (such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents) their document properties went missing.

Error: There is no error however, when you view properties of any SharePoint document they will be missing.

Background: User had three mandatory fields on a SharePoint document library. When editing the document after checkout, it allows him to select the properties and save the document. However, when he refreshes his SharePoint Library, the document properties went missing.

Environment: Windows 7, Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

Troubleshooting:

  1. Created a document with the password protection and uploaded to SharePoint and if did clears out the properties
  2. Tried doing this with the password protection and its working fine
  3. Tried the same things on other types of documents and is showing the same behaviour

Resolution:

My last post explains the reason for this http://mossnwss.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/document-properties-are-clearing-out.html.

Microsoft claims that this is the by design behaviour that when you protect any document with encrypted password it will protect the meta data associated with the document.

However there is workaround suggested by Microsoft.

Start –> Run –> regedit

Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\common\security

NOTE: the 14.0 is if you have Office 2010.  Office 2007 will be 12.0, and Office 2013 will be 15.0.

NOTE#2: You might have to create a few keys

Look for the property OpenXMLEncryptProperty.  If it is not there, create it as a REG_DWORD.  Set the value to 0.  

References:

Products Applied to: SharePoint Server 2010 (All Editions), Office 2007, Office 2010.