SOLVED

Office documents in a SharePoint Library opens in Read Only mode, when opened with Office Desktop

Copper Contributor

Hi, 

 

We are experiencing a rather complex bug/issue in SharePoint which we cannot seem to figure out. We cannot find any forum posts covering this exact issue either. 

 

Symptom: When opening any Word, Excel or PowerPoint files from a particular SharePoint Site Collection Library, using Office Desktop, the files are Read-Only. 

Remarks:

  • When opening in Online Office programs, the files can be edited with no issues. This only occur when opening using Desktop apps. 
  • Our current Office version is 2005
  • This particular library has custom metadata columns. We have tested to make these columns optional, and also reviewed whether they can cause potential compatibility issues in Office Desktop programs. 
  • The two users who have been used for testing this are both Site Collection Admins and also Site Owners. 
  • There are no Label settings
  • Documents are not stored as records
  • We have never experienced this issue before. To that note it has been a while since the last time we tested using metadata columns

Screenshots of configuration are attached.

 

We would really appreciate any help with this. If we can't resolve it, we'll have to delete this Library, wiping a good amount of hours worth of work and potentially running into the same issue in the future. 

2 Replies
best response confirmed by Anders Linner (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Hello @Anders Linner

I found this artice: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/troubleshoot/lists-and-libraries/files-open-as-read-only... 

Maybe that is a hint. If not I'm afraid you need to open a support ticket.

I hope it helps

Cheers
Rolf
#MCT #LearnWithRolf #TheCloud42 

Thanks @Rolf-42! Yours and our cloud support's responses solved it:

 

Draft Item Security 

  1. Browse to the document library that you want to configure.
  2. In the toolbar, on the Library tab, in the Settings group, choose Library Settings.
  3. In General Settings, choose Versioning settings.
  4. In Draft Item Security select Any user who can read items (default).
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Anders Linner (Copper Contributor)
Solution

Hello @Anders Linner

I found this artice: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/troubleshoot/lists-and-libraries/files-open-as-read-only... 

Maybe that is a hint. If not I'm afraid you need to open a support ticket.

I hope it helps

Cheers
Rolf
#MCT #LearnWithRolf #TheCloud42 

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