WebDav server - how to display a user friendly locked reason

Question

I have implemented a WebDav server using IT Hit for the purpose of allowing editing of MS Office documents that users attach as part of the workflow in our application.

In order to prevent multiple concurrent edits I throw a LockedException from the ILock.Lock() method, which responds to the request with a 423 Locked response.

This causes Office to display the following popup to the user:

This works fine to prevent two users editing the same document.

However, documents can be locked down in our system and then can no longer be edited - they can only be viewed as read-only. This message is misleading to the user who might believe that another user is editing the document when in fact it is locked down.

1. Is there any way to display a different locked message?
2. Is there any way to force read-only mode, i.e. remove the second option in the popup and prevent editing?

Answer 1

From our experience here is no way to modify this message somehow (at least we do not know any solution). Behind the scenes Microsoft Office is using Mini-redirector driver for communication with WebDAV server. Most response codes are ignored by Microsoft Mini-redirector. It just passes a dummy error to the calling application or Microsoft Office will ignore the returned error, regardless of the response codes or WebDAV error messages returned by server.