documents read only after upgrading to Vista & Office 2007??

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I recently installed Vista & Office 2007 on my machine. I keep everything seperate on my computer, so all of my my documents have their own partition seperate from the boot drive. Also, my computer is currently dual booted with XP & Vista, and both operating systems use the same documents.

After attempting to edit an excel file, the file is read only, and I can not save the file. I immediately changed all of the file attributes for all of my documents to read only being unchecked, but the file still opens up as read only.

After searching Google for a bit, it seems this might have to do something with Vista and how it stores files.

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas. I'm at work so I can't mess with it right now, but I would love any ideas on where to look in the right direction to solve this. I would really hate to open up every document and save it as another file format in another location....

EDIT: I have activated my version of Office, so unless there was an error in that, that shouldn't be it.

 

[spongedave]

 

[spongedave]

Did you possibly have UAC turned off while editing the document, then perhaps turned UAC back on? I did that with an Excel file, had to turn UAC back on for another reason and suddenly an XLS I was saving before would now only save as a copy. Once I turned UAC back on, I saved the file again as a copy, deleted the original, renamed the copy to the original name and could edit and save it normally again. Hopefully, you dont have too many files like that.

 

[mechBgon]

Does it say "Compatibility Mode" on the top of the window, as well as "Read-Only"?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Does it say "Compatibility Mode" on the top of the window, as well as "Read-Only"?

Yes... And UAC was left on the entire time (I actually don't mind it at all).

I found out what was going on, and I have found a temporary fix for it. Apparently files outside of the user's files are left in a read-only state. In my configuration, I had the documents residing on another drive, even though it was designated as my document folder. I moved the majority of documents to folders under my profile, and that solved the read-only problem.

Now if I can just figure out how to get documents working on Office 2007, Office 2003, and a PDA, I'll be set.

 

[mechBgon]

Sounds like Windows permissions. Give the Users class, or your particular account, the necessary permissions to the folder(s) in question?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Sounds like Windows permissions. Give the Users class, or your particular account, the necessary permissions to the folder(s) in question?

I attempted that, but it is likely I overlooked something in the process. I'm not going to lie in the least, I know very little about Vista, and I'm just starting with it, so it's going to take me a lot of messing around with. I have a working fix, albeit temporary, so I can atleast work with the stuff that I need to for now.

 

[mechBgon]

That's not necessarily a Vista-specific issue, it's more of an NTFS permissons issue that you could have with WinXP or even Win2000 or WinNT.

Anyway, try this: Right-click the folder(s) where your docs are, choose Properties, then the Security tab, and check what permissions your account (or the groups it's a member of) has to the folder. If they don't have the Write and Modify permissions (or Full Control) then you can change them there.

Any good? 😕

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
That's not necessarily a Vista-specific issue, it's more of an NTFS permissons issue that you could have with WinXP or even Win2000 or WinNT.

Anyway, try this: Right-click the folder(s) where your docs are, choose Properties, then the Security tab, and check what permissions your account (or the groups it's a member of) has to the folder. If they don't have the Write and Modify permissions (or Full Control) then you can change them there.

Any good? 😕

No, it isn't a normal variety of problem. I went through, made sure I had permissions to the folder, removed read-only attribute to the entire folder, and then went to access a document in that folder, and it would still be read only. After going back to the folder, all of the files were read-only again.

others are having the issue as well. It mainly pertains to having files and folders on different drivers / partitions. I found a really good article about it, but I'm unable to locate it right now. I'll keep searching though. This is one of the things i have to research tonight...

 

[stash]

No, it isn't a normal variety of problem. I went through, made sure I had permissions to the folder, removed read-only attribute to the entire folder, and then went to access a document in that folder, and it would still be read only. After going back to the folder, all of the files were read-only again.

That's by design (since at least XP, maybe 2000), you need to read mechBgon's post again.

Hint: That's not where you set permissions 😉