Microsoft Office – Editing on WebDAV network drive blocked

Since December 2023 netfiles has a new and improved WebDAV interface. If you have problems editing Office documents, please switch to this interface.

If a Microsoft Office application wants to open a file on the network drive, Microsoft Office must log in to netfiles (enter user name and password). Microsoft names this authentication “basic authentication”.

Permanently, basic authentication will only be possible if the administrators of the Windows environment set up an exception in the group policy.

This change will come into effect for the current channel from mid-August 2023 and for the monthly Enterprise channel from October 2023 (source)

Instructions for administrators

Windows domain administrators can add exceptions via the group policies. This makes it possible to edit Office documents again. Please note that the group policies are only available once the Microsoft templates have been installed.

Which versions are affected?

This change affects all Office 365 apps (source) and also to retail versions of Office 2021, Office 2019 and Office 2016. They have the same schedule as the current channel.
This change does not affect volume license versions of Office, e.g. Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 or Office Standard 2019.

Temporary solution or workaround

Windows Explorer behaves unchanged in netfiles WebDAV network drives. You can still work with it and, as a workaround, edit the Office files locally and then copy them to the network drive.