: For the past month, there has been an argument going on the other forum about what exactly happened when the Ring was taken from Sauron, especially with respect to the powers that Sauron had bound up in the Ring.

: One school of thought is that Sauron still had access to his power which he had placed in the Ring but could not use the Ring to control other (Elven) Ring-Wielders. The evidence which has been presented for this is mainly that Sauron is incredibly powerful, he can control Orodruin, snow on Caradhras, Saruman etc. The proponents of this theory believe that there is no way that Sauron could have been this powerful without having access to his full original powers.

: The other side of the argument is that Sauron could not access the powers which had been placed in the Ring unless it was actually in his possession. A number of quotes from the works of JRRT have been put forward to support this - Gandalf telling Frodo about "his [Sauron's] FORMER powers" [my emphasis] - (The Shadow of the Past - Fellowship), statements from the Council of Elrond, Unfinished Tales, etc. The main problem with this is, if most of Sauron's powers were tied up in the Ring, how was it that he was so powerful at the time of the War of the Ring.

: I would be interested to hear what views the august members of this learned Council have on this matter.

There is one aspect of Sauron's relationship with The One Ring which I think is very germane to your question. Sauron gained control over the men who became Ringwraiths through the power of The One Ring. However, when he rematerialised after having lost the Ring he still seemed to have a great deal of control over the Nazgul. Enough control over them to allow them to search for it.

I think that somewhere Tolkien suggests that the Nazgul would be forced to obey the holder of the Ring only if this person had a native strength approaching that of Sauron. Thus Sauron seems to have had a rapport with the Ring even when it was not in his physical possession.

This would tend to suggest that Sauron had access to some of the powers of the Ring at all times. Probably he could only articulate a fraction of the power in the Ring when he didn't have physical contact with it.