"Document could not be checked out" permission problem?

Question

I am facing problem with document check out in a SharePoint document library. This is the message I am getting:

alt text http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/1575/libraryerror.jpg

• I'm using the out of the box document library.

• I have logged on as Admin

• Document is not already checked out

• I have tried creating a new document library

• I have tried creating a new site collection

UPDATE 1:

Check out works with Firefox but not IE.

UPDATE 2:

No 2003 products are installed. This happens with all users. When I check out a document in-place (locally), check out works fine... This might be an IE problem...

When I installed a new web application the problem disappeared... But I still don't know what broke it...

UPDATE 3:

Any other file types check out fine but docx/xlsx/office related types won't check out....

UPDATE 4:

I have narrowed the problem to the web.config. Somehow its settings breaks libraries checked out in Internet Explorer.

I tested it with my original web.config on a new web-application/site collection and it worked fine. As soon as I updated my other web.config to the correct one checkout doesn't work.

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Answer 1

Solution

ASP.net Ajax 1.0 web.config settings messed up check out. Particularly this line in httpHandlers section:

<add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" 
  type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, 
  System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, 
  PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>

After removing this line it worked like a charm :)

Answer 2

I have seen this happen when you have some Office 2007 products installed along with some Office 2003 products. This may or may not be your issue, but I have seen it fairly frequently. There is a KB article on it from Microsoft, along with a hotfix that must be run on the machine experiencing the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938888.

Without further information, this would be my first guess as to the issue you are experiencing.

Lori

Answer 3

There is one other instance where this error happens that is not explained here. If you have version control turned on and have not set limits (Major and Minor). Then the upper limit for the drafts (Minor) versions is 0.511 . Once you hit this number you will not be able to check out the document. The reason for this is that the Version number is stored internally on SQL as a 16bit number and since 256 is the largest number for 8bit integers 512 is the largest for 16bit. (Okay that's enough for the technical stuff) To get around this problem just publish the version 0.511 so that it becomes version 1.0 and there your done.

The next thing you should do is set the limits for the major and minor versions.. In my case 200 minors covers about 2 months and 100 majors would help keep that even longer if needed. Then educate your users on the use of Major (Published) and Minor (Drafts). This will help keep your version control managable.

Happy Versioning...