Hi,
A client of mine had the same problem. It took me a while but I managed to reproduce it ànd find a workaround/solution. The problem Sharepoint has is that your users have access to specific subsites (e.g. http://sharepointserver/sites/SharePoint/Another%20Test/ or even only to a specific list of that subsite , but not to the topsite of the site collection (in the example that would be http://sharepointserver/sites/SharePoint) .
In itself that is not an entirely logical situation: your user can only access the site using the complete URL, and cannot browse to it starting from the topsite.
Solution? I have two:
1) Give all necessary users the contribute permission level on the top site (“read” is not sufficient). Next, break the inheritance on all lists, libraries and subsites of the top site where you do not want those users to have contributor access.
Which users? You can use all authenticated users, but it is only those users that will be wanting to use the spell check for whom it’s necessary. So de facto that means only contributors or higher.
2) If you think the above solution is quite drastic and requires too much maintenance or could cause a security leak later, you can also
a. On the top site, create a new permission level, e.g. “spellcheck”. Assign only the following site permissions to the permission level:
- browse directories
- view pages
- use remote interfaces
- open
Any other will give more rights, any less will not solve the problem.
b. On the top site again, assign the new permission level to the necessary users. The effect will be that
i. they càn access the topsite but not view any content. They can use it to browse to their subsite
ii. they can use the spellcheck
Does it make sense that all this is necessary to be able to use the spellcheck on lower levels? Not to me. Possibly it will be the subject of a hotfix or service pack later on?
Kind regards
Pieter Jan Hermans
