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
    2019-06-03T14:33:52+00:00

    Yet another suggestion

    Grant Access Error

    https://appuals.com/office-2016-grant-access-error-on-macos/

    Doesn't help.

    Time to stop blaming the users (and their fonts).

    Pierre

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-06-04T17:08:55+00:00

    This worked to fix my issues!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-04T17:40:06+00:00

    Why would you refer to a 4 year old document with generic instructions to repair permissions?  This just started happening within the last few months related to Office software updates.  How can you suggest that is a file permission problem? that would be consistant and not resolved by quitting and reopening word.  

    The telling of your statement will be when the next update to Office comes out, it will be fixed, so this is on Microsoft as suggested above.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-04T18:02:57+00:00

    The problem is that Microsoft tends to be in total denial about such things and has such a lousy system for bug reports that it can take MONTHS or even YEARS for anything to come to their attention, especially in the case of intermittent bugs. (Things probably get fixed faster when the bugs plague their "corporate" users. We ordinary users are just barely tolerated at the best of times anyway.)

    In the absence of a proper process, so-called MVPs tend to blur the picture more than anything else by making suggestions that are, more often than not, as you pointed out, totally irrelevant.

    It's up to us users to fumble through the mess until Microsoft's engineers finally start paying attention and notice that there is indeed a problem. 

    From my perspective, the problem is OBVIOUSLY linked to sandboxing rules and Microsoft's inability to implement them properly. The time table makes this obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense.

    It is POSSIBLE that fonts are involved in this and that the problems occur only on the systems of people with a large number of fonts or with "defective" font files. I don't know. I followed the instructions in the last page that Jim Gordon linked to and "validated" all my fonts. They now all pass with flying colours. And yet the bug is still there on my system. 

    Yes, I do have MANY fonts. So what? There's nothing in Microsoft's official line that says "This product does not support Mac users with large font libraries." I am not going to sacrifice some of my fonts (how many?) just to please Microsoft. All my other apps work perfectly fine with all the fonts that I have installed. It's up to Microsoft to ensure that their software works as well.

    Until then (which, again, could be MONTHS or even YEARS away), the only solution that works for sure for me, whenever Word starts acting up, is to quit and relaunch it.  It's a horrible kludge (especially since Word fails to reopen document windows automatically), but I don't see any other solution that works.

    Your mileage may vary, of course.

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