Is it possible to hide the Web File Properties dialog in Office 2003?

Question

We're implementing SharePoint 2007 but have Office 2003 as our client. This causes problems when editing metadata since custom field types like BDC columns aren't represented properly within the Web File Properties dialog in Word. To get around this, we would like to disable the this dialog to force users to edit metadata within SharePoint.

How can we do this? Also, are there other alternatives that we should consider (short of upgrading to Office 2007)?

Answer 1

We use a product called metaEngine to customize the Office properties dialog. (I have no affiliation with the company)

Essentially it uses an httpModule to detect when the Office properties dialog is called and injects / rewrites the html to provide a custom editor for metadata. You could either use this approach, or use a similar httpModule to present a "this functionality is disabled" type screen.

Have a look at the requests going between Office and SharePoint using Fiddler and it'll give you an idea of what you could change.