A PowerPoint 2010 pptx file from a network share opens read-only

Credit for this one goes to @xrobx99. He did all the work behind this post. I felt that it was such an obscure “bug”, that maybe my posting of the solution might help someone that is expereincing the same issue.

The problem we were having was that when a user would open a large PowerPoint (.pptx) file from a network share,  it would always open as read-only. Looking like this :

Now, if you try and search for PowerPoint 2010 and read-only, all I can say is, good luck. You quickly get lost in “your permissions are wrong” ,and “people telling you to right click and deselect Read-only”. We had been trough all of that, and we could not lick the problem.

The symptoms we were experiencing were:

• If a user double clicks on a large pptx in a network share through windows explorer, the file is opened read-only
• If a user right clicks the file and selects open through windows explorer, the file opens correctly
• If the file is opened either by “double click” or “right click open” on the local machine, the file opens correctly
• If the file is opened either by “double click” or “right click open” in the PowerPoint file open dialog on either a network share or local machine, the file opens correctly

The solution that @xrobx99 figured out is that if you disable the “Preview Pane” and the “Details Pane”, the file will open correctly every time. Of course you can disable these via group policy:

User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Explorer/Explorer Frame Pane/Turn off Details Pane
And
User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Explorer/Explorer Frame Pane/Turn off Preview Pane

@xrobx99 concluded that if you leave these two panes enabled, windows explorer will open the file to generate a tumbnail, and if you double click the file during that time, it will open read-only.

Hope that helps some one.