Word 2007 Converting Douments to Read-Only

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We have a single user who opens a document on anetwork drive, saves a copy for herself, and the original document on the network share then becomes Read-Only and other indiviudals in the department are unable to open the document to save changes to it, without first saving with different name and then deleting the old item and renaming it. This has become a burden for the department. It’s only one individual that seems to have the problem.

This has been a recurring problem with most if not all documents that that indiviudal opens. Do you have any suggestions about what might be going on? Do we need to reload Office 2007 on her PC? You help is most welcome,

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Long ago, I noticed that using Save As to save to a different folder leaves the in-use flag in the original folder until the new document is properly closed. If Word crashes, it may fail to clean up. But you didn’t mention any crashing or other failure to close the new document, so it’s a mystery to me why the original document is still marked as being in use.

== Edit ==

I made an assumption that the reason other users could not save the document was that Word thought it was in use. If the attribute on the file itself was changed so that it shows read-only at the file system level, that would be an entirely different scenario.

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I think you are right on this one. I will have her test. Not open the file, but save it from My computer with a different name. She is having some problems with crashes so that could make the problem worse. Thanks and I’ll report back, Judy

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I think you are right on this one. I will have her test. Not open the file, but save it from My computer with a different name. She is having some problems with crashes so that could make the problem worse. Thanks and I’ll report back, Judy

It doesn’t really matter if your user changes the name. The file will still be read only (actually “in use”) until she closes the new file. I’ve notice this behavior when I’ve wanted to move or rename the old file. I sometimes can’t do it until the I close, not just the new (renamed) file, but Word itself. Also, if she has been having crashes, there could be leftover temp files—the ones that let Word know that a file is in use and that it must be treated as read only. With Word closed, delete any such files. See Phil Rabichow’s suggestions for more on this.

Pam

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Usually this is the result of an incompatible or out of date third party add-in. Start the user’s Word in Safe Mode and test again.

Press Start and type in

winword /a

and press Enter. Word will start in Safe Mode. Now test to see if documents are left in Read Only mode. If they are now OK, then start looking at the user’s add-ins.
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