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I have a user that's got a weird permissions problem on Windows 7. He's trying to create a shortcut for Outlook on his desktop(he doesn't want it in his start menu or his taskbar...). If we right click the outlook.exe and do Send to > Desktop, it works just fine. If we do a search for "outlook" in the search bar, and then try and drag and drop the outlook icon to the desktop, we get the error message "You need Permission to perform this action. You require permission from SYSTEM to make changes to this file: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007".

Dragging and dropping other exe's onto the desktop work just fine. They create shortcuts without any problems. But if I try to do ANY of the Office programs (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc..) I get this permission error.

Any ideas? He's using an A.D. account and he's in the local administrators group. He's an executive so he's not accepting "this isn't a real problem because I found another way to make a shortcut" as an answer. Any help is appreciated.

Safado
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    Probably some kind of odd UAC thing, but its really just a file copy. Look at the permissions of the source "shortcut" and the destination and compare. oh and is he holding down the ctrl key so it attempts a copy instead of a move? – SpacemanSpiff Jan 04 '11 at 17:16

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Right-click the files in your search result and click Properties. You'll most likely find that the Office shortcuts are located in a folder that your user only has Read & Execute permissions on.

Drag-and-Drop within the same file system performs a "Move" operation by default, which requires Modify permission.

He will either need to be provided Modify permission on the location containing the shortcuts (I wouldn't recommend it) or use an alternative method for creating his desktop shortcuts like the one you provided or the CTRL + Drag-and-Drop that Tom has suggested.

Rob D.
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    You mean, drag-and-drop *within the same filesystem* performs a "move" by default. – jscott Jan 04 '11 at 18:31
  • That was exactly it. When I would do a search for "Outlook", the result would be a file in C:\ProgramData\..... to which he didn't have the correct permissions. So I pinned the program to his start menu, which created a shortcut in his own AppData folder. I could then drag and drop the icon to his desktop. It made him very happy to drag the icon onto his desktop and have a shortcut appear. Thanks for the help. – Safado Jan 04 '11 at 18:36