How to turn off the reviewing, editing, and view feature?

We opened a ticket with Microsoft as well and they closed it out pretty quickly with the same update that they aren't going to do anything about the feature and its here to stay. The only response they gave me was to "submit feedback" in the 365 admin portal. It's pretty clear this feature is causing multiple problems for different companies. I agree they should push out an update to fix this.

I'm at a law firm, Help Desk. Our workaround is, save the document and the new file works. Workaround #2, Open the file, Press File, Share, send as a word attachment. (don't need to send the email) just open attachment at that point, that works.

The other fix was to change our Firm's licensing method, that was not an option for us - nor should anybody have to.

A MS update caused this issue and it's too bad they can't push out an update to fix it. These files are simply set to Read Only, no other protection and always been able to type into a read only, what a set back.

I am also having the same issue with this. To be very specific about this issue:

Not all of our users are having this issue.

A user has read-only access to a Word Document.

When the user opens the Word Document - it opens in this "Viewing" mode which is indicated in the top right hand corner. You cannot make any changes to the Word Document. If you try to do so, on the very bottom of the Word document, there is a bar that says "You can't make this change because the selection is locked"

Previously - you are allowed to make changes to the Word Document however, you will need to use the "Save As" function and select a different folder destination. This has always been the case for many years and it doesn't make sense on why this is a thing now. It is such an unnecessary "feature" that serves no purpose.

I have updated to the current channel which was released on 1/26/2023 and this is still an issue. I do not understand what is the point of this. It makes no sense.

Please do comment saying "Check if the file or folder has the read-only box" checked. This never mattered in actually editing the file. This only mattered when you were trying to save it.

Thanks Suzanne - that's some positive news.

I had two support calls logged with Microsoft detailing two different issues with this feature which they have literally just closed on me saying I can't log developer issues that way and to use the forums instead. And that's even after doing a remote session with their support people to show them the issue, and they ponder what I've shown them for almost a week and then just close the calls. It's so hard to get an issue escalated.

I have also found that using Documents.Add using a document that is read only will also fail if this feature is enabled - Word returns a runtime error 5097. This also occurs for some files in directories with limited access (like the default workgroup templates location) Move the files to another location and they work. It's breaking simple VBA code I've had running for over 20 years.

And it's also frustrating that this feature is only on for some users - there is no consistency at all. I've tried asking for a non-developer solution of being able to turn it off. That would be fine as a workaround for now.

In the latest versions of Word for Microsoft 365 (e.g. ver. 2210, Build 16.0.15726.20070, Current Chanel) we noticed a similar problem when opening read-only document - in that case the Word automatically sets the Viewing mode, which means that you cannot make any changes in the document.

In previous versions of Word, when you open a read-only document, you are allowed to make changes in the document. Of course, if you want to keep the changes, you have to save the document in a new file.

Our users would like to have the previous behaviour regarding opening read-only documents but it seems there is no way to turn off the editing/reviewing/viewing feature in Word.

The strange thing is that although users have the same version of Word installed, some of them have the editing/reviewing/viewing feature turned on, while the other don't.