Rotating jpegs - what gives?

[PeterAit]

I usually use Windows Photo Viewer for a quick look at jpegs I have been sent by email. It wants to display all photos in  landscape orientation. It's my understanding that all cameras encode orientation in the jpeg, and they do display properly in Lightroom. And then, the rotation buttons in Photo Viewer are grayed out. Any clue as to what's going on?

[Zorki5]

I usually use Windows Photo Viewer for a quick look at jpegs I have been sent by email. It wants to display all photos in  landscape orientation. It's my understanding that all cameras encode orientation in the jpeg, and they do display properly in Lightroom. And then, the rotation buttons in Photo Viewer are grayed out. Any clue as to what's going on?

Never had this problem myself (I use ACDSee for stuff like that), but quickly googled it, and it seems like the only reasonable explanation is that you're having some issue with file access rights. If you're accessing images on an external drive, that might indeed be the case.

The universal answer, copied from forum to forum (e.g. here), is this:

Why I am Unable to rotate images in windows photo viewer?
Follow these steps:

1.Click on START menu.

2.Click on MY COMPUTER.

3.Right click on the drive which is making you trouble,

4.Click on the Security tab.

5. Click on the Edit button where it says To change permissions, click Edit.

6. In the Group or user names box, click on the user that you want to edit.

7.On my computer, I had to select "Users (computer-name\Users)" at the bottom of the list.

8. In the Permissions for Users box, click on the check box to Allow Full control.

9. Click ok.