Word Always Opens Documents In Read-Only Mode / Subscription

If you are running Windows 10, see the article "Known issues with Office and Windows 10" at:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Known-issues-with-Office-and-Windows-10-28d56d84-c16c-4763-8eac-e51e05a37a16?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Microsoft will be updating that article to include fixes for other issues as they are developed.

No, I am running Windows 7. However, I was able to solve the problem. I did a web-repair (Control Panel > Programs and Features, right-click on Office 2013 > Web Repair). This finally fixed the problem. It also fixed another problem I had with emailed attachments from within Word or Excel sending the attachment, but not the message body.

You should create a new thread so that we do know what environment you are using.  In the case of this thread, the OP was using 8.1, and as you had not specified your version of Windows, it was not unreasonable to assume that it might have been Windows 10.

So far, nothing in this thread has changed or altered Office 2013 (running under Windows 8.1) from opening files in read-only mode. If I open the file from Explorer, it's fine. If I open that same file from Word, 99% of the time, it's read-only. Nothing from any other thread that I've located has helped either.

Here's what I've tried from this thread and others:

Repaired Office 2013 - Files still came up read-only

Started Word in safe mode - Files still came up read-only

Disabled Protected View - Files still came up read-only

Added "My Documents" as a trusted location - Files still came up read-only

There is no "Unblock" option when I right-click on the file

Moved the file to the desktop  - Files still came up read-only

Killed the registry entry for Word/Data - Files still came up read-only

Opening the file using Explorer and then doing the "New Blank Document" thing was 100% pointless - Files still came up read-only

I have wasted so much time with this. I am absolutely sick of the issues that Microsoft has with fixing anything and that we're not hearing from a MS Tech on how to fix this.

Does anyone else have other pointless things for us to try in an effort to fix what Microsoft won't talk about or fix themselves? Should I just give up with all attempts to understand and fix MSWord and instead learn to open my files using Explorer until that work around is broken by the next "fix" implemented by Microsoft?

Yeah, I'm not very happy. I suspect that many of you suffering from this same thing are unhappy too!

If I open the file from Explorer, it's fine. If I open that same file from Word, 99% of the time, it's read-only

Interesting.  In my case, it doesn't seem to make a difference; double-clicking the file in Windows Explorer or opening it form within Word both cause it to open in read-only mode (but not all the time, just most of the time).  Closing Word and double-clicking the file again opens it up in editing mode.

I had all the same problem you are writing about. What solved it for me was a web-repair. No, the "normal" repair didn't do it, it had to be a web-repair. I use the term "solved" loosely ...

We had other problems with Outlook 2013, In the end, our solution was to "downgrade" to Office 2010. That has support for another 5 years during which time we can look for alternative solutions (LibreOffice, eMclient ...). Plus, we've had zero problems with 2010.

Our office is a State Pension Fund manager and we use[d] SBS2008 for an Active Directory domain. The problem discussed here and other problems our office has experienced started with the requirement to register the Office software using a Windows Live ID account. In my case I used a personal hotmail.com account, not knowing what I was in for. However, even if I registered each staff member with their own individual account (can you say "time consuming"?) that still creates problems. For example, the CFO's workstation is on its 3rd CFO. The director's workstation on its 2nd director. No big deal, it's a AD Domain, right? The new user just sits down and logs into the workstation. Done. Not so fast if Office 2013 is in the mix. We would not be able remove the previous user's Windows Live account so the new user (and the organization) would have to keep access to the ex-employee's Live account as you cannot transfer Office 2013 registration between Live accounts.

Even if we did that there are still problems. In the AD domain, if a user logs onto a different workstation and opens Office/Outlook there, the "account" defaults, not to the registered "Live" account, but to that user's domain account, e.g. username@hprs.local. If/when the user manually changes this back to the registered "Live" account, all the problem discussed in this message recur: bodyless emails from Word/Excel, read-only documents in My Documents, ... The only way to fix this is to re-web-install Office from the Internet, and NEVER switch accounts, EVER! This makes the whole roving profile notion of AD/DC unusable.

Apparently Office 2013 works fine on standalone workstations with one possible Live ID user and/or in the Cloud. As a public pension fund, we're never going to the Cloud (I wonder what banks and investment companies are doing?)  Office 2013 does not function well in a non-Outlook.com Active Directory environment.

With the dropping of the Small Business Server product, removal of Exchange from Server Essentials and the apparent direction Office is heading, is seems clear that Microsoft no longer considers small businesses and offices as part of its target market unless those entities are willing to go to the Cloud. Given the built-in data mining features of Windows 10, I'm skeptical about how "secure" my information is in Microsoft's cloud -- not to mention the nearly weekly break-in of high-profile private and government data stores. The Cloud and Office 2013 are not for us, and perhaps neither is Microsoft.

We will be looking at alternatives to Office, and possibly alternatives to Windows in the next several years.