Additional permissions are required to access the files (Word for Mac)

Anonymous
2019-05-06T07:05:57+00:00

Split from this thread.

Hello

I am trying to open a docx file and I keep getting a message that additional permissions are required to access the files. 

After selecting the grant access option I get the message "Word cannot open the document:  user does not have access privileges" and I cannot open the document.

My current version of office is 16.24

Version of Mac is 10.14.4

When I perform a computer restart I can open my Word docs then, after a while, I can't open any docs. 

attached is a screen shot of the error message.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2019-07-19T04:22:23+00:00

This is a fix, but the specific steps are a bit drastic by removing your whole keychain, which contains a lot of other useful things.

You can fix this in a different way without messing up your whole keychain.

Make sure the office Applications are closed.

Within KeyChain Access, just search for ADAL, remove the entries starting with 

MicrosoftOffice as the kind plus com.microsoft.adalcache

The 16.27 update release July 16 2019 should fix most of the issues with this Bug.

Additionally the following are some fixes that will fix this specific error and similar permission errors with Office Mac products

  1. Update Office to 16.27 or later (choose Check For Update from the Help menu in any Office Application)
  2. Remove Microsoft ADAL keychain entries (search for ADAL in the keychain and remove those items)
  3. Remove the securebookmarks preference files

Press Command+Shift+G in the finder then paste the following

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences/

Within this folder remove the following file

com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist

Press Command+Shift+G again and then paste in the following

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/

Within this folder remove the following file

com.microsoft.Word.securebookmarks.plist

After any and all of the above steps, please reboot your machine (manually removing preferences and keychain items does not guarantee they will be recreated properly unless you restart)

Additionally if the files are located on a shared drive, the files may be open by someone else. The other users may also just have the files highlighted in the finder (whereby it is then generating a preview of the file and therefore the file is marked as open)

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-05-27T15:44:45+00:00

    When faced with the Access problem, when saving, I found that using "select all"  and "copy" will save the file to the "clipboard". I then shut down the word program 16.25 and reopen it. That resets the word memory to accept further work.

    Then start a new docx document and paste the "clipboard" saved material to the new  document.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-05-26T00:00:26+00:00

    THIS FIXED IT. REDICULOUS THIS WAS PUSHED OUT.

    Don't listen to anything Microsoft people say. They don't have a clue and they'll waste your time.

    This is clearly a newly introduced intermittent bug introduced by incompetent Microsoft developers in recent builds of Word for Mac. I have the same problem here.

    My fix is usually to quit and relaunch Word. After that, I am able to open the files that Word said I didn't have permission to open. All of a sudden, I have permission to open them! What does that tell you?

    Clearly it's not a file permissions problem, not a font problem, not a file name problem, and not a problem with YOUR or YOUR COMPUTER at all.

    It's a problem with Microsoft's developers being incompetent and Microsoft's support staff being clueless. Since I haven't updated my OS in a while, I suspect it's linked to Microsoft having changed their app to make it Mac App Store-compliant. The Mac App Store requires compliance with strict sandboxing rules, and Microsoft's developers probably don't know how to do it properly. It'll take them at least six months to figure it out.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-05-25T20:15:32+00:00

    Thanks, Larry.

    If that is indeed the cause, I, for one, am not reorganizing my entire file hierarchy just to please Microsoft Word. Long file names and file paths have been supported in macOS for nearly two decades. It's about time Microsoft got with the program. Like you said, there's nothing acceptable about this, least of all the ongoing denials of so-called MVPs. (Let's not even mention the inability to hit actual engineers with reproducible scenarios.) 

    Out of curiosity: What qualifies as a “long” file name for you? My full file paths are typically within the 80- to 130-character range.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-05-25T19:43:48+00:00

    When using office 365 Word 16.24 long file/folder names, opening 4 or 5 files in a row with long filenames will cause a freeze in the system and the program will not save (either save or save as) and will not open new files. The warnings are the same as you described Above. The only cure I have found is to turn off the word program  16.24 and then start it again.

    I really do not think this an acceptable fix.

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