Document locked for editing (Office 2000, SR 1)

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After a Word crash, when I try to re-open my document, I get a message saying “Access denied” and “Locked for editing” and “another user is using this document.” My system is not on a network, and I’m the only user. The document is not part of a Master Document, and there’s no password. What’s going on?

What do I need to do to be able to get at the document that crashed to continue working? Must I go to the backup copy, or must I open the document in read-only mode and save it under another name? This results in many versions and possible confusion as to which is which.

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This is a problem that I encounter occasionally, too. I’ve resorted to doing a “Save As”, deleting the original, and moving on.

Is the problem corrected if you re-boot?

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Yeah, the “save as” trick works, but can get confusing if you have to do it several times on the same file. And no, the problem didn’t go away when I re-booted. The “locked for edit” condition seems to be related to improper closing of the file when Word crashes, creating a temp file with a tilde ~ in the filename. Refer to the other response to my question for details about that. And thanks for the ideas and support!

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Yup, it’s the tilde ~ temp file that causes Word to think the file is opened by another user and to lock me out. I saw such filenames at the top of my folder list but wasn’t sure what they meant. Deleting them seems to have taken care of that problem. You didn’t mention deleting the ~ files, but I’m guessing that’s what you meant!

Then I did the Find Files search and turned up another 15 or so from various folders. All gone now. Thanks very much for your help. Once again, WOPR to the rescue.

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