Word 2007 and 2010 open files read only

Anonymous

I have word 2003 files that I am now opening with word 2010 (recently upgraded from 2007). All existing files open as read only and I can't save them. Even newer docx files. How do I solve this?

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Anonymous

One cause of this problem can be the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer.

If you try to open a Word file via Windows Explorer and you have the Preview Pane open the first thing that will happen is that the preview window will start reading the file to display the preview of that file, in the meantime Word itself will also start reading the file. Sometimes the two process will conflict and Word will determine that it can't open the file for editing because the file is locked (by the preview window) and therefore Word will open the document as read-only. Large files and files with certain types of content can cause the file to be locked by the preview pane.

If this is the scenario that is causing your problem either disable the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer or open the file from within Word via File|Open.

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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K MVP Volunteer Moderator

From where are you opening the files? Are they on a CD or were they copied to a CD and then onto the Hard Disk? If so, the Read Only attribute of the files will have been set. You can uncheck it by selecting the files (multiple is OK) and then right click and select Properties.

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61 additional answers

Anonymous

2010-07-04T21:50:42+00:00

What about if you create a docx file now, save it, close it and open it: does that work? If it is only previously created docs, how did you copy them to your new computer?
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