Word Document Locked - Aaaargh!!!

swee

Does anyone know how to change a read-only file?

I closed an msword document the other day and when I tried to open it today it said it has been locked for editing by 'user'. I am the only person who has access to this pc! Mad

I have tried selecting Properties on the complete folder and unclicking read-only to apply to it and all sub-folders but it still won't let me edit it!

*butts wall in frustration*

Guest · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:25 pm Post subject:

try clicking on the file properties...

Guest · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:26 pm Post subject:

try again and again...

Guest · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:46 pm Post subject:

"If this only happens in one particular document, try clicking on Tools |
Unprotect Document. If all new and existing documents are locked for
editing, then it's probably because you have not activated your
Word/Office software, or because you have an expired trial version of
Office 2003. What happens if you start Word and click on Help |
Activate Product? If you are already activated, a dialog box saying so
will appear. If you are not activated, the Activation Wizard will
start. If you have an expired trial version, a dialog box will prompt
you to enter a valid product key or purchase a key _."

Also, if you have WordPerfect available, try opening the document with that.

As a side note, I would HIGHLY recommend you choose to at least back up your documents in a format other than Microsoft's .doc, such as RTF or OpenDocument. This way you will be sure you will be able to open the document without having to depend on Microsoft to support the format, which they keep changing.

The same kind of thing happened to me with WordPerfect documents... I had to hunt down an old copy of WordPerfect to open the files so I could read them, as there were no other WPD reader that would work with the files properly. If I had saved them as RTF, that sort of thing would never have happened.

These documents are your work and your history... say no to vendor lock-in.

swee · Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:01 pm Post subject:

boingo · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:05 pm Post subject:

I get the same problem with Word files. I'll save them as per normal with no re-write limitaitions and eventually some of the files can no longer be written to. In the past, I had been copying everything from the file, then pasting it into a new document and saving it with an extra letter or number on the file name. Then I had to delete the original and shorten the new file back to the original file's name.
I'll try changing the properties next time. Cheers.

cosmicB · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 4:20 am Post subject:

Some OS's and composers have a save as you work feature... if you use it you won't ever make that error ever again... Plus it saves your work in process should you ever experience a sudden power failure, or accidentally touch a wrong button, while composing...

monosodium · Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 8:43 pm Post subject:

Let's put some BS to bed first...

ACTIVATION - That stuff about activation is utter twaddle. If it's not activated it won't let you do lots of things and it whines and complains like anything.

SUPPORT - The stuff about MS not supporting / changing the format is BS - they'll be supporting for as long as people have documents written in it. If you actually knew what you were talking about (yes, you guest!) the you'd know that the actual file format hasn't changed in about 10 years. Pillock. Word supports some extra stuff but that's not a change to the format...

Word docs do sometimes go a bit screwy like any files, but usually if they're going bad then they probably corrupted a way back. There are some things you can do though...

If you make lots of small revisions to a document then a good thing to do is use "save as" not save once in a while, or use "disable fast saves" in the options. It will make your documents smaller too. You can do this to "broken" documents too.

Another life saver is the "open & repair" option in the main file->open dialogue in Office 2003. It usually allows you to fix problems like that without having to mess about too much.

There's a good article on microsoft support on how to recover damaged documents as well - it's well worth a read if you get problems in the future too.