Exit vs. Close - Reduce Login Prompts

A customer support FAQ entry, which skips the the technobabble about why you get the prompts and gets right to the mitigation strategy…

 

One frequently-asked question is, "Why does SharePoint asked repeatedly for my username and password? " Both Microsoft and WSU are working to make the problem go away altogether. In the meantime, if you use Internet Explorer, there is one simple trick you can do yourself to minimize the number of login prompts you get when opening Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel).

When you open a Word or Excel document from a SharePoint site, Internet Explorer doesn't open the document itself. It hands the request off to Word or Excel, and the application contacts the server directly. The server asks the application for your username and password, and the application asks you. This prompt is unavoidable with today's technology, configuration, and requirements.

However, once Word or Excel has your username and password, it keeps them until the application "exits". If you don't exit the application, the next time the SharePoint server asks for them, the application can pass them along without bothering you about it.

So when you are done viewing (and possibly editing) a document from a SharePoint server, don't use the "X" in the upper-right corner of the window; that exits the application and throws away your login information. Instead, if you are using Excel 2003, Excel 2007, or Word 2003, use the "close document" icon that's just below the "Exit" "X".

If you are using Word 2007, there is no "Close" icon; but you can (1) click on the "Office button", and (2) click on the "Close" item at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

 

Either way, you only need to log in once for each application, not once for each document.