[Samba] All works except MS Office 2003 Pro navigation of win. shortcuts to shares

[samba.9.pbsluvr at spamgourmet.com]

All works except MS Office 2003 Pro navigation of win.
shortcuts to shares

Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 on IBM e-series Xserver
Samba 3.0.9-1.3E.2  (PDC)
OpenLDAP backend
Used Idealx tutorial 
(Hats off to the Samba, OpenLDAP, Idealx teams!)

Because of the 100+ shares needed, and the fact that
Windows can only map drives to a maximum=letters of
the alphabet, I setup a read only share with windows
shortcuts (\\Samba\sharename)  pointing to all the
necessary shares.  Everything works like a charm
except Microsoft Office 2003 Pro.

Windows explorer, Wordpad, Notepad, even Autodesk5;
they all can browse (eg File-Save as) the shares via
the shortcuts and are either allowed or denied as per
the smb.conf permissions.  However, MS Office 2003 Pro
can only *see* and follow the shortcuts which are
pointing to shares which have
valid users = @"Domain Users"  (everyone)


[sharename]
....
valid users = @accounting

Even if a logged in user belongs to a group with
permissions on a share Office still does not *see* the
shortcut to that share.  (If when doing file-saves as
or file-open and selecting all files, Office will try
to open shortcut as a file and not follow it to a
share).  

Tried changing permissions to everyone but shortcut
still not visible.  The work-around is to browse to
share using explorer and rightclicking new Word
document - Then Word will be able to see contents of
directory and to File-save as into that share.  It
will even remember location through recent files...

Then after tearing most of my hair out, a test share I
setup suddenly appeared from within Word!
Ok, check the logs.  Of course I was restarting samba
several times and the /var/log/samba/smbd.log shows
the "Processing section..." for each share every time
I restarted Samba.  However the /var/log/samba/log.
shows the "Processing section..." at odd intervals
with no apparent periodicity (except Sunday mornings
at 4am).  My test share showing up within Word seemed
to coincide with a "Processing section..." event.

So I changed permissions to all shares to @"Domain
Users" (everyone) and waited for the "Processing.."
event.   It happened Sunday morning 4am but Word still
does not see the shortcuts.  Ok. My test share had
browseable = Yes so I changed all shares to browseable
= Yes and am waiting for the event to occur again. 
Waiting....   Waiting...

So my question: Is there a way of forcing this event
to occur?

smb.conf
...
log level = 2
syslog = 0
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%U
...

smbd.log
....
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 0] smbd/server.c:main(760)
  smbd version 3.0.9-1.3E.2 started.
  Copyright Andrew Tridgell and the Samba Team
1992-2004
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[homes]"
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[netlogon]"
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[profiles]"
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[printers]"
[2005/05/16 09:13:36, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section.... 
(....ditto for all the 100+ shares)

log.
...
  Processing section "[homes]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[netlogon]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[profiles]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[printers]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[print$]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[all_staff_exchange]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[fileplan]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[test]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[A00admin_general]"
[2005/05/10 14:02:54, 2]
param/loadparm.c:do_section(3421)
  Processing section "[A01admin_Assoc....
(....ditto for all the 100+ shares)



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