Hi,

We have a network that is completely closed off from the internet. There is a sharepoint 2013 installation and we use office 2013. When we want to checkout a document in sharepoint through word or excel, we get an error that the server cannot be reached. There is also a problem with the contacts sync in outlook.

After a lot of testing we have come to the conclusion that this is a problem with office. You can see more details on the testing in this and in this topic.

I've posted this problem here because this is clearly a office problem and not a sharepoint problem. I hope somebody from the microsoft office team can have a look at this.

Thank you

The scenario you meet is that

You have Microsoft Office 2013 finstalled on a client computer. From the client computer, you try to open or to download an Office file that is stored on a SharePoint server. But the Office file does not open or download.

Right? If yes, please use the Fix it tool in the following link to solve this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2123563/en-us

Thanks.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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• Edited by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Friday, September 13, 2013 5:54 AM

Hi Tony,

The document opens without a problem. On our document library, we have checkout enabled. When the document opens in word, you get a yellow bar with a button to check out the file. When I press that button, I get the following error: "Microsoft Office cannot complete the operation because the network is unavailable. Check your network connection and try again".

The network itself is working just fine, the only thing is the yellow exclamation mark which indicates that I don't have internet access (we are completely disconnected from the internet so  this is correct).

After some tests with fiddler2, we've noticed that there are no http requests. I've tried this with word 2010 and here it works without a problem.

The next test was at home with a test setup. I had the same problem with office 2013 so it has to be a problem with office and not sharepoint.

Our sharepoint consultant put me in the right direction by telling me about NCSI. So I've done some more research and I've set up a local NCSI server. Restarted my networking and guess what, everything works now. So this is definately a serious error in office! I cannot understand that Microsoft forces companies in having internet access. I hope this is a bug and not by design.

So we have a workaround now, but this is not fixed at all. Please, can we get a fix for this?

• Proposed as answer by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Tuesday, September 17, 2013 6:44 AM

Thank you for your kindly reply. Your feedback is important for us. I'm trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Thank you Tony. I hope a fix will follow soon. With the change I've done on the pc's, it will not let us use wifi hotspots anymore. This is one of the downsides of the work around.

Thank you for your kindly reply. Your feedback is important for us. I'm trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Hi Tony,

Have you heard anything back on this? I have not seen any patch for this. Is this still being looked at?

Thank you for your kindly reply. Your feedback is important for us. I'm trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Hi Tony,

I've installed the SP1 and the problem is still present. Do you know if someone is looking at this?

Thanks.

I have the exact same issue.  It works a little better if we turn off the require check out option. Everything works with Office 2010 but I need it to work with Office 2013.  The last post says SP1 did not fix the issue. That was going to be my next step. This is insane..

Same problem...fix this Microsoft!!!

Another request to fix.   Can confirm that Word 2013 SP1 doesn't fix this. 

Also, can't use Lookup or Managed Metadata in the Document Information Panel if offline.

Anyone have any updates on this matter?

Nothing has changed as far as I know

Any progress on this from MS?

Bump.

Having the same issue. Has MS gotten anywhere with this?

Even with that workaround in place we still have the symptoms