Read-only mode in Word 2016 (Mac) locks out any edits until Duplicated and saved?

Anonymous
2015-09-05T15:01:42+00:00

Why do all docs opened in read-only mode (like every attachment from Outlook) lock down the file for no editing until it is saved? The new error bar comes up and says Read Only: To Save a copy of this file, tap Duplicate. Then tapping the Duplicate button brings up a save dialog box. I definitely don’t want to save the dozens of attachments I access on a daily basis, but sometimes you want to tweak some spacing to print a resume or any other number of things.

I get that Outlook saves into the temp folder, and I've ensured there are read/write permissions on that folder. Is there a setting I'm missing to fix this? I can't tell if it's a bug or feature. Forcing a save first would be a new and rather invasive design choice.

Anyone else getting this behavior and find a fix?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2016-05-06T21:37:25+00:00

I found a workaround to this issue.

I have a Mac with El Capitan (not relevant) and Office 2016. When I open a Word attachment from Outlook, it prompts to Duplicate which requires that I save it first in a non-temporary folder area before I can edit it.

My workaround is

  1. open the email in Outlook.
  2. You will see the attachment with a Word icon. Next to it is the PREVIEW button which uses the Mac's built-in Preview application. Click on the preview button to open it in the preview application.
  3. In the preview window in the upper right corner click on the OPEN IN WORD icon. It opens it in Word in edit mode without requiring a save.

I did not find the problem or resolution to be related to illegal characters.It's a deliberate sandboxing issue which makes sense from a security and UI point of view. It is a pain but, was put in place deliberately for a reason. I only started to investigate it after one of my Mac users complained about the extra steps. The biggest pain for the person was saving to a non-temporary folder area. If it defaulted to DOWNLOADS or MY DOCUMENTS, then this would have been more palatable.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-10-07T15:54:31+00:00

    And it is ridiculous and very frustrating. MSFT support has no clue about this.

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  2. Stefan Blom 353.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-10-07T21:34:18+00:00

    That's the new design behaviour for Word 2016.

    If you open a document from your email, you can read it but not edit it, until you save it out of the Outlook attachment store.

    Assuming that I have understood your explanation correctlly, this is the same behavior that was implemented a few versions back for WinWord, to protect users from saving changes to an open attachment and then losing those changes after closing the attachment (because the document is open in a temporary files location). For WinWord, this is discussed in an article by Graham Mayor (see http://www.gmayor.com/outlook_attachments.htm).

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-10-08T02:21:45+00:00

    I can respect and support default behaviors that benefit the average user, but I cannot support lack of functionality to turn off this intrusive behavior. Most of the time I'm specifically interested in not saving the document and just making some notes for a call or fixing margins when Word applies my printer settings and turns a 1 page doc into 1+ pages.

    If the temp folder is an issue with permissions, allow me to set the downloads folder at my choice so we can get around this. I'm sure if I bothered to brainstorm I could come up with more options, but I pay MS to do that work.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-10-09T16:20:25+00:00

    I have to agree, you should be able to set this depending on the person.  I edit documents directly from email all the time, then resend the open document.

    Come on MS - why mess with something that already worked fine and had been the same for 20 years.

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