Unable to save files in Word 2016 for Mac on OS X El Cap

Anonymous
2016-02-18T19:08:46+00:00

Hi folks,

I'm running into a situation affecting some but not all Macs at our office. We recently updated to Office 2016 (via Offiec365), and are running into problems with Word in particular. 

What's happening is that after opening or creating a new document and making changes, typing ⌘-S to save does not do anything, and the Save and Save As options are grayed out in the menu. Closing the window or quitting Word will trigger the "Do you want to save..." dialog, which then appears to allow you to save the document, but the document that is actually saved is completely blank. 

Has anyone encountered this also? It's affecting a couple of iMacs and a MacBook Pro, but some iMacs and laptops are not experiencing the same problem.

Thanks,

Tom

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
Anonymous
2017-02-13T23:50:13+00:00

I had this issue persistently last year but it seems fixed now with latest releases all round. I suggest running Microsoft Autoupdate, and doing manually every few days too. Also join the optional Office Insider program to get latest fixes.

My system:

Word for Mac 15.32 (170201)

MacBoook Pro (2016), 10.12.3

Was this answer helpful?

6 people found this answer helpful.
0 comments

46 additional answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. John Korchok 236.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-04-06T00:31:38+00:00

    There have been other reports similar to yours recently, so it sounds like a bug that only appears in certain installations. What happens if you save to your Documents folder, but not inside the Google drive folder?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-04-06T00:20:29+00:00

    To expand on Jim Gordon's reply, if Word>About Word is less than 15.19.1, please choose Help>Check for Updates and apply the most recent updates. 

    If you still have a problem, please try saving to your user folder (Users/YourUserName/Documents) and see if works.

    Thanks John, but I have random but persistent problem with this. When i go to 'SAVE' an open Word doc (instinctively every minute or 2), a dialog box warns me I;m going to overwrite an existing file (duh). I click yes, and the exact same box comes up over and over again in an endless loop. I can't save changes to the file without saving AS with a different name. Creating a simple Word doc can therefore mean going through a dozen versions in order to save it!  I'm sure this is a bug and would appreciate attention to it from MS.

    I save to folder in Google Drive which sits inside my HD Documents folder.

    Am running latest versions of OS and Office:

    OS X 10.11.4

    Word 15.20

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-24T00:08:59+00:00

    Thank you all for your replies. The affected computers were running Word v. 15.18 (160109). I have since upgraded to the latest version on 2 of the affected computers, and also ran a disk repair utility (Disk Warrior). On the 3rd Mac, the problem resolved itself without updating from v. 15.18 or running Disk Warrior. I will upgrade it to 15.19.1 later this afternoon. At any rate, the problem is not occurring now, for whatever reason.

    Thanks,

    Tom

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. John Korchok 236.2K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-21T20:56:45+00:00

    To expand on Jim Gordon's reply, if Word>About Word is less than 15.19.1, please choose Help>Check for Updates and apply the most recent updates. 

    If you still have a problem, please try saving to your user folder (Users/YourUserName/Documents) and see if works.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments