default file permissions

Question

I recently installed MS Office 2016 on a Mac. It seems like it is not handling default file permissions correctly. When I create a new document (go into Word, select on the blank template, save it to a file in your desktop or home directory), the permissions are as follows:

isip027_[1]: d ~/Desktop/joe.docx 

56 -rw-------@ 1 picone  staff  25770 Aug 17 19:12 /Users/picone/Desktop/joe.docx

By default, I set my permissions to "rw-rw-r-" (so that people in my workgroup can share files).

Somehow Word is not following the shell's umask. I think this is a problem since it should adopt whatever default permissions the user has set in his/her shell. I have tried changing the permissions of Normal.dotm, but that didn't work.

Previous versions of Word never had this problem. In fact, this is the first version of Word in about the last 10 years that has this problem.

The problem is not specific to Word. The same thing occurs for PowerPoint and Excel:

isip027_[1]: d ~/Desktop/joe*

56 -rw-------@ 1 picone  staff  24840 Aug 17 19:30 /Users/picone/Desktop/joe.xlsx

So it has something to do with how Office 2016 is handling permissions. I can't find a setting that controls the default for new documents. It doesn't make sense to have to manually adjust this for every new file.

Please advise.

Answer 1

Thank you for this great information Roger and soho.

For the sake of thoroughness, can you give a full matrix of what works and doesn't? Something like the table below would be tremendously valuable

Brief description of environment:

Office for Mac issue:	Word 2011	Excel 2011	PowerPoint 2011	Word 2016	Excel 2016	PowerPoint 2016
Ignores system umask	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n
Overwrites permissions of explicitly chmod'ed fil es	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n	y/n
Other network or file IO issues

My email is jaspotan (at) microsoft (dot) com if you'd prefer to follow up over email.  Thanks so much.  You guys rock.

-James

Answer 2

John,

Thank for the reply. I don't understand how they could deliver a version for a Unix environment like a Mac with this as the default behavior - it just goes against how Unix works. In my case, the problem is that when I copy the files to our web server, the permissions remain and the files are not visible from the outside world. So you have to remember each time to fix the permissions. Of course that means it won't always get done since you can't rely on your typical user to remember such things.

It really sucks big time and is creating so much extra work :(

-Joe

Answer 3

I can verify that permissions have changed and I'm sure that it's not possible to change it. The new version of Word is sandboxed, many users can't save anywhere except their user folder and permissions have changed. MS is not giving out any information about these changes, but in my opinion, it seems it's all part of a pattern of locking the program down to make it hypersecure.

Answer 4

I appreciate the answer, but this isn't really relevant. We operate in a networked Unix environment and have been sharing files for years. There is no need to change that environment.

Office has worked fine also and doesn't override permissions.

However, it seems with Mac Office 2016, something has changed and it is writing files with the wrong permissions. Can someone verify that and tell me if it is possible to change that?

-Joe

Answer 5

You really shouldn’t be changing file permissions on your home folder. Permissions are designed the way they are to prevent others from affecting your working environment.

If you’re in a networked workgroup environment, use a file share on a server. Or create a folder in /Users/Shared.

And use ACLs rather than POSIX permissions to control access. ACLs will override POSIX and are much more flexible. You can create a new group with appropriate users in the Users & Groups pane in System Preferences. Then apply that group to your folder and give it read and write permission for the group.

Hope this helps!