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
    2019-07-31T21:50:03+00:00

    I have the latest update for the Office products (or so says the MS updater).

    I opened my keychain access, and searched for anything with Microsoft in it. Nothing. I only know of one keychain access utility, and that's the one I opened.

    I attempted to use your instructions via a terminal window, but it's been many years since I wrote any code. 

    Would you please provide specific instructions, ie. At prompt, enter /bin/rm then press return. At the next prompt, enter ~Library (or whatever the sequence is).

    Thanks.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-07-31T21:55:42+00:00

    Ha ha! Thanks for the tip. I've been using Macs since they were invented. I've also been using Suitcase since it was invented.

    I suspect that there's yet another issue with Microsoft not liking Suitcase, too.

    I've heard some programmer type people say "You don't need that many fonts." My response: "Well, then I guess you don't need half the keys on your keyboard to write code either."

    :-)

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-07-31T21:58:25+00:00

    Hold the Option key down while clicking on the Go menu in the Finder. Select "Library", then follow the path indicated to locate the files to delete.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-01T03:18:20+00:00

    @Derek Vogel I believe that if you are only using MS Office 2019, they do not store prefs/names/passwords in Kaychain anymore.  I can no longer use Keychain access to sign into Microsoft.  I have to actually type in my user name and password. After I deleted the items I listed in a prior post they never reappeared in Keychain.  They were all from prior versions of MS Office I have had (I have had every version of Microsoft Office on my Macs since the beginning, including using Entourage for email for years)   The new products appear to avoid using Keychain.  Perhaps that is the problem we are running into.  Validation is not running through Keychain.  Only One Drive has a token in my Keychain right now in the past few days from Microsoft.  And I have been using Office extensively to prepare some bids up.  So they should have tokens in there if it used Keychain.  However this version of MS Office is doing validation of files, it is not correct.

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