Office Web Application Event Errors: Event ID 3760 & Event ID 5214

Cannot Open Office Documents after OWA has been installed and configured.

Error message of this type showing an Id but no other general errors

After multiple troubleshooting attempts an error showed up in the Windows Application Event Viewer

Event ID: 3760:

Fist I looked at the Account in SQL and it did not have any access to the portal content db, my first thought was that the Farm account should be elevating the services account to the proper level, but it looks to not be working like that.

My first attempt was to provide read access for the services application to the portal DB.

Next Event ID 5214 Error message: (Read was not enough, but it helped me know that this was an access/permission issue.

So, I quickly provided the sp_servicesapps account Owner access against that content DB, surprise, that was it, everything was working.

With that said, I did not think giving that account DBOwner was the correct level of permissions when all it needs to do is execute a get command. So I changed the level of rights back to be a DB_DataWriter and tested it again, it worked.

So a quick review:

Service Account used for the OWA services (PowerPoint, Excel, Word Viewer need to be able to execute a SQL command against the Web Application DB that you are trying to open/view your Office document on.

Example: Portal site http://contoso.com has a Content DB of wss_content_contoso_db

Application Pool account: domain\sp_portal

Your Service application is using a separate account of domain\sp_servicesapps

This account needs at least DB_DataWriter access to the wss_content_contoso_db to be able to open Office Documents.

Hope this helps you overcome this issue, if you have any feedback on this or a better resolution please let me know, thanks