Several office applications will not edit

[Don]

I have a problem. A person I am working with has had all Office applications lock-up so that when he tries to edit anything in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, it comes up saying that it is a "read only file". It is doing this to hundreds of files (all part of a proposal that is due). Any ideas on what could be causing it and/or how to correct this?

 

[Martin]

I have a problem. A person I am working with has had all Office

applications lock-up so that when he tries to edit anything in Word,
PowerPoint, or Excel, it comes up saying that it is a "read only file". It
is doing this to hundreds of files (all part of a proposal that is due).
Any ideas on what could be causing it and/or how to correct this?

Just select all the offending files in Windows Explorer, right click, select
Properties and clear the read only attribute.

If the files were restored from a CD backup, that would have done it.

 

[Don]

The read-only attribute was set but unfortunately he's still unable to edit any of the documents. He is also unable to edit ANY documents anywhere else on his computer (i.e. other folders). He is unable to edit ANY office documents.

 

[Martin]

Something ain't right here! Do you know how the file attributes got set? Has
something been done/happened to this PC recently?

To go back to basics, and please excuse me if I ask the obvious;
This is a hard drive rather than removable or network device?
The drive has plenty of free space?
The machine has been virus checked, and has anti-virus software installed?

Other than that I'm currently stumped; but I'll keep thinking....

If you need the files, can they be copied to another PC and accessed from
there?

The read-only attribute was set but unfortunately he's still unable to

edit any of the documents. He is also unable to edit ANY documents anywhere
else on his computer (i.e. other folders). He is unable to edit ANY office
documents.