Word documents become read-only

A few of my co-workers have been having problems with Office XP. Intermittently, if they close a word document and then reopen it, the file will be read-only. However, if they close it again a few times and try to reopen it, the file will eventually open normally. Has anyone else come across this problem? I would appreciate any ideas/solutions.

Here's a couple of things that may help:

- So far, the problem has only occurred on network drives.
- The computers are running Windows XP with NTFS.
- Our network is maintained by NT server 4.0. Server drives run NTFS.
- When this occurs, there's no temp file in the file's directory.
- If Word is left unattended for a while, it will automatically convert the file to read-only while the file is still open.
- The files are NOT being simutaneously open by separate users.
- My computer runs Office XP on Windows XP on the same network, but I've not run into this problem.

-Keith

P.S. I'm hoping somebody might know if this is more likely a network problem or an Office XP problem. I assume the problem is directly related to the temp file that Word creates.

 

Almost certainly a network issue rather than OfficeXP. For one thing, you don't see the problem. For another, we are set up much the same way and also don't see the problem. Now the question becomes exactly what with the network settings may be doing this.

- Only with Word docs or with other Office doc types like Excel?
- IP addresses DHCP assigned or static? If DHCP, how long is your lease period?
- What rights do the problem users have to the folder(s) that contain the documents?
- Are they running the app locally and just getting files from the server or is the app running from the server?

 

- I'm not totally positive, but I think it happens with both word and excel files.
- IP addresses are static.
- All users have Admin rights
- app is run locally

 

Shining Light

I can't solve the problem, but I can relate a similar fact. Since I networked (in March 2002) an XP and a Win98 box, both running shared programs and shared files, I always get a message saying that the same personname (which might be a user profile and is the same as administartor) is already using my Word or Excel file; do I want to open it read-only? Perhaps this is a duplication?

I think this prompt can be set to automatically open read-only. If there is network activity that is monitoring permissions, it could be playing this peek-a-boo game. Wish I knew. I'll watch this thread.