Forum Discussion
Files [READ ONLY] but no indication they are, so cannot save changes
Months later I continue to see the same thing Luke. I have to close the file and reopen, and sometimes close Excel and reopen, which is a real pain if I have multiple files open and am in the middle of a project.
And if you make changes you need to save and this happens, you have to save the file as a different name in a different location, then name it the same as the old file, close Excel, then copy the newer version on top of the older version.
If you save as a different name, the delete the old and rename the new, you lose all saved history for that file in the Sharepoint/OneDrive/Group file system.
This needs to be fixed. This is still on .1212.
We are seeing this for those that ran /takeover and for those that installed the new Sharepoint Onedrive client fresh.
Last night I re-checked the box under settings "Use Office 2016 to sync Office files that I open". Initially, several Excel docs I opened all gave me the READ ONLY prompt, when I clicked "Edit Workbook", it actually worked! Then I went to the other site I have synced (I have 3) and opened an Excel doc, and this time, no READ ONLY prompt. And yes, when I attempted to save, it told me it couldn't contact the server so I would have to save it under another name.
Today I was mostly getting the READ ONLY yellow bar, and when clicking "Edit Workbook" I was getting the "Can't contact server" message. I'd close the doc and re-open it, until I got it to open without the READ ONLY message in the yellow bar. Then I could make a test change, and save it, and watch it do the "upload to sharepoint" in the status bar at the bottom...and then be ok. Sometimes it would fail and I'd have to re-open, but once it updated successfully, it would always update from that point on until I closed it.
I also noticed that opening it from the "Recent Files" list (opening Excel first, rather than double-clicking on it in the file explorer) would almost never give me the READ ONLY yellow bar, and it would almost always fail to save ("Can't contact server"). I'd have to close it, and then open it from file explorer...sometimes a few times...in order for it to work.
Would be nice if anyone from MS could weigh in. Is there anywhere to see a list of reported bugs or at least what they are currently working on? Have you guys submitted this through the Report a Problem menu when you right-click on the System Tray menu? I'm about to do that...
"Have you guys submitted this through the Report a Problem menu when you right-click on the System Tray menu? I'm about to do that..."
Yes - BE VERY CAREFUL!!!
When I did that, they send me instructions to reset my OneDrive setting to "clear the issue up."
- It wiped out ALL of my preferences in OneDrive, both personal and business
- It reset every site to full download, rechecking every box I had unchecked in every site I was syncing.
I didn't realize what had happened until OD was well on its way to downloading some 200GB of files to my machine and I had to scramble to uncheck things then wait for it to realize I had unchecked, then remove those folders I didn't want.
When I then told the MS rep what happened, she said "Yeah, that happens. And we know about the bug but wanted to see if that fixed it for you" knowing darn well it hadn't for anyone else and the issue is fundamental to the product and not anything on my machine.
So if you get any response to run the onedrive.exe with the "/reset" switch, just delete the email and go about your day.
Same thing if you get an email saying to use the /update switch, or the /uninstall switch. If you have .1212, you just have to wait.
Thanks for the heads-up. Sounds just as useful (ha!) as the "Repair" option was under GROOVE.EXE.
Despite their promise that using the /takeover would not have to download any files, it honestly appeared that it did just about as much as a new sync. There is one other guy on our team who recently did an OS re-install, and so he triggered the sync with the new client He was telling me last night that he IS getting the READ ONLY prompt all the time, and I don't think he's seeing what I'm seeing, so it probably would be worth me just doing a full re-sync (stopping the sync of the libraries, deleting the folders, deleting the cache folder, etc.) to see if it resolves it.
One of the things I liked about the /takeover was that the old folder path used "Sharepoint" but now it uses "Contoso" (although as you see in my message, the folder name is still really Sharepoint if you use /takeover!). That actually works well for us, because we have macros that run and expect the local sync folder location to have the name "Sharepoint" and we knew were were going to have to update all of them to use the company name now. Using /takeover, I didn't have to do that. Now, I do think that you can select your folder when you sync, but I don't know if OneDrive will still put "CompanyName\SiteName -Shared Documents" under the folder you select, or just "SiteName-SharedDocuments" under the folder you select. If it is the latter, we can still put it under Sharepoint.
But, if these issues are the result of the /takeover not working right, then I should just re-sync and see if that works, and we'll have to bite the bullet and update our macros.