Word Always Opens Documents In Read-Only Mode / Subscription

As you have noticed, an online repair is often more effective than a quick repair.

For what it is worth, many people have had problems running the click-to-run (virtualization) versions of Office 2013. Often, not only a repair but a complete reinstallation is required when problems occur. See https://support.office.com/en-us/Article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b; at the bottom of the article it says the following:

If running Repair doesn’t solve the problem, you might need to uninstall and reinstall Office. See Uninstall Office 2010 or Uninstall Office 2013 or Office 365.

Reinstallation can then be done following the instructions at https://products.office.com/en-us/download-back-up-restore-microsoft-office-products.

Microsoft:  Please "STOP IT" with the "Re-install" nonsense.  NO ONE has time to perform re-installs.  Your software is a TOOL, not a LIFE.  We use it to be productive.  Re-installing is NOT productive.  Please learn how to get to the "ROOT CAUSE" of such issues, and FIX THEM AT THE SOURCE!  Last year, I paid for tech help from Microsoft, thinking that I would get ROOT CAUSE fixes from the "experts".  I found even level 2 techs to know less than I do, and I have found that I can do much better, when I have issues, if I search the web and fix it myself.  You are embarrassing yourself with these "re-install" answers.  STOP IT, STOP IT, AND STOP IT.

Of course you should only reinstall as a last resort, when everything else fails. For now, it seems to be the nature of click-to-run installations that they sometimes break beyond repair.

Also, please note that posters in this forums are volunteers, with very few exceptions. I do not work for Microsoft. You should post feedback and suggestions for Word in the forum at http://word.uservoice.com.

I had a similar problem with Word opening in read-only mode.  I had tried everything I could think of.  It was very frustrating.  It turns out that it was caused by the preview pane in Windows Explorer.  Word picked up the preview as an open version of the file.  After I closed the preview pane, the problem ceased.  Simple solutions are the best.

Thanks for the follow-up.

For what it is worth, it has been reported earlier that problems may occur when the preview pane is displayed. Best to turn it off in File Explorer entirely. What you can do instead is display large icons which will then include previews of many files.