Grant File Access: Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges

Anonymous
2015-07-20T23:38:33+00:00

I am unable to open some Word documents due to permission issues.

I used Disk Utility to repair permissions and created a new profile and still have the following problem.  See three screenshots below:

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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John Korchok 235.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2017-11-30T22:29:05+00:00

You'll most likely find that you must repeat this every month, when you install an update. Every time I've tested the updating process, the fonts get reinstalled in the package.

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John Korchok 235.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2018-01-04T22:31:59+00:00

It's worth a try creating a new user account on your colleague's Mac, sign in to it and test Office. If it works, you know it's some degree of corruption in the old account's installation.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has never published really complete uninstall/reinstall directions for Office 2016 for Mac. I think it likely they don't know how.

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Anonymous
2018-03-21T21:14:20+00:00

After working with my client for over a year, I have finally got higher ups in Microsoft Mac Development to acknowledge this bug and they are currently working on it. At least in our instance, the issue stems from activating too many fonts with a 3rd party font manager like Suitcase of FontExplorerX. The amount of fonts is usually in the 3k range, which then causes Office 2016 to act all loopy and throw up random error messages.

If you aren't using a 3rd party font manager, then your issue could be different. For those that are using a 3rd party font manager, Microsoft Developers are working on this and they expect a fix in the next couple of releases. I'll keep this thread up to date as I find out more information.

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Anonymous
2018-02-02T16:13:48+00:00

I had this problem too and it comes back sometimes after an Office update, like the most recent 16.9.1.

What I do is clearing the MS-Office font caches with Cocktail and then restart my Mac immediately. Word then opens the documents without error.

Worked for me with 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Cap / Mac Pro 2008. I'm using FontExplorer X Pro 6.

Hope it helps.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-11-18T20:23:31+00:00

    Office 2016 sandboxes the fonts in the app. I'm not a font expert but this change might also make using a font management app like Suitcase more complicated. Kurt Lang's site is a good resource: http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

    Office 2016 installs fonts in each application folder not in the usual Fonts > Microsoft folder. Each app has its own fonts for sandboxing reasons.

    Control-Click (Right-click) on Office 2016 app in Applications. You’ll find fonts in this location.

    Contents > Resources > Fonts

    Previous versions of Microsoft stored it's fonts in the main Library/Fonts/Microsoft folder.

    Deleting the old Microsoft Fonts folder might help if you are no longer using Office 2011.

    • Office does not need ANY of its fonts to “run.” However, various features of Office will be broken or display poorly unless you leave the fonts it installs in place.
    • I would caution you not to disable the Chinese/Japanese fonts. These are required to produce certain special characters.

    I would also delete the Containers for the Office app that is crashing. Delete font caches using a utility like Font Nuke and restart after deleting fonts!

    User's Library > Containers

    com.microsoft.Excel

    com.microsoft.Outlook

    com.microsoft.Powerpoint

    com.microsoft.Word

    Restart your Mac then test.

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