"This modification is not allowed because the selection is locked" -with an activated version of Wor

[derrybeg]

I have three PCs all running XP Pro and and Office 2007. All copies
of Office are fully registered and were activated 6 months ago. I
have a number of documents that are not editable - returning the
message "This modification is not allowed because the selection is
locked".

Saving the document as a new copy does not help. Some documents do
not cause a problem (i.e. this editing problem is not seen in every
Word document & new documents can be created without restriction). I
assume it is attributable to the document because the effect is the
same on each PC. The documents were created after the Office suite
was registered/activated and have been modified in the past. Any help
or assistance would be appreciated.

 

[JOlsen]

Did you ever find out how to fix it? I'm having the same problem - don't know
what triggered it, I have no idea. I have all these papers due, and can't
type them up.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It usually means that your trial version has expired or you have neglected
to activate your retail version.

 

[IndyIT]

Actually, there are multiple reasons why a document might say this at the bottom:

1) You are using a trial, or unactivated version of Word
2) some portion of the document may be protected
3) And this one took me a while... [Office Button] -> Prepare menu has a "Mark as Final" option that makes a document Read Only. If this has been done, there is an icon in the Status Bar (to the right of the Word Count) that says "Marked as Final" when you hover over it. To undo, just go back to the Prepare menu as select the "Mark as Final" option again.

I realize this is an old post, but it came up in the search engine so I'm hoping people will find this additional information useful.