Unable to open task pane or fill down in datasheet view using IE 8

Question

I've received a couple questions from people who all have issues using datasheet view when using IE 8 in SharePoint 2007. I've reproduced this in MOSS and WSS 3.0 with the same result. I use Office 2003 as well.

Problem 1: Unable to open the task pane

Clicking the task pane on the right side simply does nothing. Can't open it.

Problem 2: Can't fill down

Before, you could click in a cell, click the little square, and then drag down. This filled all the cells below just like in Excel. Now, it doesn't do anything.

Problem 3: Clicking document name doesn't open the document

Before, you could click the document name to open the document. Now, if you click in the Name column it just goes to "edit" mode to rename the file.

Workaround: Clicking on the icon in the Type column to open the document.

I'm trying to get an idea if this is expected behavior or if this is broken. If it is broken, any ideas on how to fix it?

Answer 1

This is most likely due to the version difference (O2003 on MOSS2007). After googling around a bit I get the feeling the concensus is that O2003 lets you work with a list in datasheet view, but that fuunctionality is limited compared to when using O2007.

Installing the Access 2007 Runtime (so you don't need the whole product) should fix the problem.