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
    2019-06-27T20:04:43+00:00

    Having the same issue. There are no additional fonts installed, quitting and restarting Word works sometimes. If it were a permissions problem, quitting and restarting Word should theoretically have no effect. I also observed waiting 10 minutes and somehow it miraculously saved without the error.

    I have now observed this with several computers. Rebuilding the font cache on Mojave, deleting preferences and some of the container files (and reactivating Office) works for a few days but the problem reappears.

    Unfortunately, troubleshooting it is difficult as you cannot "make" the issue appear. But I am getting very frustrated.

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  2. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-06-16T23:16:14+00:00

    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.

    * My apologies. However I did issue a correction on May 29.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-11T18:25:07+00:00

    You're welcome. Sadly, it will only work for a while. So you'll have to get used to doing it regularly.

    Until Microsoft finally fixes this.

    Pierre

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  4. 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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