Documents become read only

[Greg Creedon]

I manage a network of around 100 users using Microsoft Word 2003. A number of
users have been reporting that, as they work on a document, it turns into a
read-only file and they have to save the file under another name. Anyone have
idea why this is?

 

[Terry Farrell]

We have had that problem reported before but never got a real solution.

When you examine one of these documents when it is reported as Read Only, is
it Read Only at Word level (that is, has the document been set to Read Only
when you look in the Save options) or has it been given a read only
attribute at Windows level (that is, open Windows Explorer and see what
attributes have been set in its file properties)?

What type of Network are they connecting to the server, what type of Server
OS, etc? Any firewalls (ISA server)?

 

[Helpdesk]

Hi,

I do have the same issue, though not all users having this issue but couple
of users have to rename the working files very often, I am running on W2K
Domain and users on XP and office 2003, all the updates are happenning
regularly through WSUS, the only change I think was installing 2007 viewer.
Can this have any effect,

Cheers,

Helpdesk

 

[Terry Farrell]

That doesn't answer the critical question:

When you examine one of these documents when it is reported as Read Only, is
it Read Only at Word level (that is, has the document been set to Read Only
when you look in the Save options) or has it been given a read only
attribute at Windows level (that is, open Windows Explorer and see what
attributes have been set in its file properties)?

Terry

 

[RCB]

I have the same problem with 2 vista machines on a 5 machine network running
XP. When i access the file on my network vis Windows Explorer the read-only
box is NOT checked. When I then click on the file and it opens in Word, it
opens as read-only.

 

[Terry Farrell]

If this is Word being changed to read only, then I really have no idea where
to go with this. I could understand if it was at the network level the read
only attribute was being added, but I cannot think of any way that Word
would suddenly change a file to Read Only.

When this happens, the users are able to resolve this by doing a SaveAs and
starting as as a new document. But has anyone tried to find out if it is
possible to simply clear the Read Only setting in the SaveAs Options to see
if they can save it. If it won't let the Read Only setting be cleared, what
happens? Does it ask for a password or something?

I would be really happy if someone could forward me one of these documents
that has been made Read Only. Email an attachment to
(e-mail address removed) (remove the word 'beyond' from the address).

Terry

 

[Terry Farrell]

Further to this after more thought: if a user saves a document to the
network, EVEN IF it has a Read Only attribute set, it will not affect the
current user because the document is still open. It can only become Read
Only to the user who has saved the document if they close the document and
open it again.

Therefore, if this is what is happening whilst the user is editing, it MUST
be a third party add-in with its own SaveAs macro that is causing this
problem. Are you using any add-ins with Word/Office ?

Terry Farrell

 

[RCB]

If this is Word being changed to read only, then I really have no idea where
to go with this. I could understand if it was at the network level the read
only attribute was being added, but I cannot think of any way that Word
would suddenly change a file to Read Only.

When this happens, the users are able to resolve this by doing a SaveAs and
starting as as a new document. But has anyone tried to find out if it is
possible to simply clear the Read Only setting in the SaveAs Options to see
if they can save it. If it won't let the Read Only setting be cleared, what
happens? Does it ask for a password or something?

I would be really happy if someone could forward me one of these documents
that has been made Read Only. Email an attachment to
(e-mail address removed) (remove the word 'beyond' from the address).

Terry

 

[RCB]

I will be traveling a few weeks, so I will not be able to access my network.
I did notice, however, that when I opened the properties of the Word file
"test" located on computer 1 running Vista, from computer 2 running Vista,
the read-only is NOT checked. When I do the same thing from computer 3
running XP, the read-only IS checked.
It gets confusing!!

 

[Emerus314]

Dont know if this will help in your environment - I just resolved a
similar situation. I purchased a Dell notebook with Vista installed
recently and experienced problems with Office (Word) documents opening
read-only. The following links helped me resolve it:

This MS knowledge base article describes a different error with
identical error messages:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814112

but this one mentioned permission issues with Vista:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/235586-44-office-2007-vista-read-only-problem

I had copied files from my old machine to an extended partition on the
new machine (a "D" drive) while logged in as a true administrator on
the machine (I did this because I couldn't figure out how to connect
to the vista machine while logged in as a "regular" admin). When I
logged on to the machine with my regular Vista account I found that
all the Word documents would open read-only, even though no
permissions were set on those documents or on the drive. After
reviewing the above links I logged on as the administrator again and
explicitly added the "regular" admin user to the list of users with
full control on the drive. After that I had no problem.

I've been trying to get used to all the Vista permission issues, but
I'm about to give up and just use the true administrator account. I'm
spending too much time figuring out these kinds of problems...