Sharing/permissions/saving problems on both Word and Excel files

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

I rebuilt my PC a couple of days ago and moved from 10 Pro to 11 Pro. Had a struggle getting it activated, but I supposedly am now.

In the last few hours, I've experienced several types of sharing/permissions/saving problems on both Word and Excel files (Office 2010). This was unheard of on my just retired older PC.

Not on all files for whatever reason, but on many important ones. I'm on Excel pretty much all my waking hours daily.

Particularly spooky is an error forbidding me from even saving a extremely important financial file, even when I have made no changes to it at all.

I've fumbled around looking at security and permissions details on various individual files and folders. I've never encountered this so don't what I should even ATTEMPT to do. All the files in question are on a separate D drive and of course I'm hoping there is some type of "global" solution.

Perhaps most importantly.....I need to avoid digging a deeper hole so don't want to do harm.

I'm the ONLY human who touches this PC...no other "users". So this business of 4 or 5 "groups or user names" in security details is way over my head.

Any guidance appreciated.

Try3 · Jan 19, 2026

Fishmill said:
Office 2010

Which Edition of MSOffice 2010 is it?
Is it, by any chance, MSOffice Starter Edition? That's tied to the first computer it is installed on [pre-installed on, in all cases].

Are you able to save other files [say, Notepad files] in the folders you have had problems with?

Denis

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

Thanks for the reply.

It's Home and Student. I've been using 32 bit Office. Has worked flawlessly for over 10 years on Win 7 and 10. No dice in the last 48 hours on 11.

Since my original post, I've done this:

Did a repair install; no help.

Did an uninstall.

Then a reinstall of 64 bit version, thinking that might make a difference. No change.

Less than 10 minutes ago, I tried the new 64 bit version on my most critical Excel file.

It opened normally.

I then entered 765fr or something like that in a random single cell and tried to resave. Failed....with a sharing violation, telling me to save to another location and it will try to repair the file. I said OK and within 10 seconds got a second error "unable to save the file" or to that effect.

It doesn't seem to happen on all files.

Opened a simple 1 page Word file and entered an "H" at a random spot and tried to resave....NO CAN DO.

Some errors refer to permissions, some to sharing, whether I actually make a change in the file or not.

I'll go back to 10 if this persists. But for all I know, it will now fail on 10 also.

Hughbris · Jan 19, 2026

Depending on how you upgraded from 10 to 11, account and associated file permissions (or lack thereof) might be the problem;
Take ownership of the affected folders.

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

I don't have many .txt files. I'll try a few:

Just looked at half a dozen at random. They seem to be OK, if you can judge from 6.

I also did a virus scan of all files on both drives. Nothing found. It ran through about a million files in maybe 20 minutes...so I guess this new critter's speed is worth something.

But 11 is not looking good.

Hughbris · Jan 19, 2026

A quick way to test the above is to copy one of the affected files to a FAT32 formatted USB drive or partition and see if you can save or modify the copy without issues.

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

Hughbris....

I did not "upgrade" in that sense.

Clean install.

Have you personally ever followed what it says in your link?

"Affected folders" may well be hundreds or thousands. I have 35,000 folders on 2 drives.

I could run a lot of commands on folders, but I'm reluctant to just try stuff on speculation for fear of making a bad situation worse.

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

Hughbris said:
A quick way to test the above is to copy one of the affected files to a FAT32 formatted USB drive or partition and see if you can save or modify the copy without issues.

Just did that. Using my most important Excel file.

No errors. Edited and resaved without issue. Don't know if you can extrapolate that to all other files, but it's a start.

That signifies what exactly?

Hughbris · Jan 19, 2026

With a fresh install your existing files and folders on another drive will still have the security identifier and permissions from your old Windows 10 account, unless you take ownership of the files and folders while logged into your new Win 11 user account.
I've done the ownership thing countless times, across backups and OS changes, all sorts of situations.
If you want to be ultra safe, copy all the data you have to the aforementioned FAT32 device (if there's space) which will wipe all the permissions and allow you to start afresh, if you're wary of just going ahead with the ownership step across hundreds of files.

Given that I'm sure you'll want to retain the same folder structure with the corrected permissions, at some point you will need to take ownership of the existing files and folders to rename or move them so that you can create the folders anew, with the correct permissions and /then/ put the copied files back.

It sounds more complicated than it is, in practice.

Oh copying to FAT32 removes all the permissions, FAT32 doesn't support them.

pseymour · Jan 19, 2026

Sounds like permission problems. Can you show us the permissions on one file, e.g. icacls "D:\CIS-RAM-Version-1.0.pdf" should yield something like this:

Code:

D:\CIS-RAM-Version-1.0.pdf BUILTIN\Administrators:(I)(F)
                           NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(I)(F)
                           NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users:(I)(M)
                           BUILTIN\Users:(I)(RX)

altaylor · Jan 19, 2026

Fishmill said:
I rebuilt my PC a couple of days ago and moved from 10 Pro to 11 Pro. Had a struggle getting it activated, but I supposedly am now.

In the last few hours, I've experienced several types of sharing/permissions/saving problems on both Word and Excel files (Office 2010). This was unheard of on my just retired older PC.

Not on all files for whatever reason, but on many important ones. I'm on Excel pretty much all my waking hours daily.

Particularly spooky is an error forbidding me from even saving a extremely important financial file, even when I have made no changes to it at all.

I've fumbled around looking at security and permissions details on various individual files and folders. I've never encountered this so don't what I should even ATTEMPT to do. All the files in question are on a separate D drive and of course I'm hoping there is some type of "global" solution.

Perhaps most importantly.....I need to avoid digging a deeper hole so don't want to do harm.

I'm the ONLY human who touches this PC...no other "users". So this business of 4 or 5 "groups or user names" in security details is way over my head.

Any guidance appreciated.

FWIW, in my Office 2010 install (and it's likely the same in other MS Office versions beyond 2010), I must set its "Trusted Locations" to give me full access to my files. Below are my (somewhat cryptic) notes of how to do it in Word.

Set Trust Center Options:
File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Microsoft Word Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings 'box' -> Trusted Locations -> Add new location -> Browse to: 'C:\Users\(user name)\Documents' -> Click 'OK' three times to go back to Word -> Test.

Good luck

Try3 · Jan 19, 2026

altaylor said:
in my Office 2010 install (and it's likely the same in other MS Office versions beyond 2010), I must set its "Trusted Locations" to give me full access to my files. Below are my (somewhat cryptic) notes of how to do it in Word.

Set Trust Center Options:
File -> Options -> Trust Center -> Microsoft Word Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings 'box' -> Trusted Locations -> Add new location -> Browse to: 'C:\Users\(user name)\Documents' -> Click 'OK' three times to go back to Word -> Test.

That's for trusting Word VBA code. The OP has not mentioned that.

All the best,
Denis

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

Hope the above pic is helpful. I'm a klutz with Paint.

That's one file I had problems with.

I've been up all night literally fighting this.

Gonna crash and re-examine after I wake up.

You guys have been great so far. Appreciated.

pseymour · Jan 19, 2026

Try3 said:
That's for trusting Word VBA code. The OP has not mentioned that.

Yup, but the example file for which OP showed permissions is an xlsm. The plot thickens.

Fishmill · Jan 19, 2026

OK. Slept like a log and back at it.

Are there any other ideas?

Which is the better idea?

Copy all data files on my D drive (30,000 totaling about 1 TB) to a FAT 32 drive, which strips them of permissions. Then copy them back to D, which gives them new problem-free permissions.

Or

Run certain commands direct on my original files on D.

Or something else?

More confusion: I just copied 30 or 40 random files from random folders (jpg, Excel, PDF, Word, MP3,) to a "test" folder. I was then able to view, manipulate, edit, and resave all of them without incident. Included in this was my most critical file. It's fine today, but I could not resave it at all 12 hours ago.

I don't understand why only some of my 150,000 personal data files appear to be affected and apparently intermittently?

Fishmill · Jan 24, 2026

I eventually solved this by changing ownership and ensuring that my account had full control.

Took several hours to get it right and practice how to do it.

It was spooky and had 8 or 10 different things that had to be just right in the permissions area. I honed my technique on a few dispensable files and eventually moved to larger and larger folders until I had done my entire D drive operating OK.

Be sure your account is an "administrator".

Sharing/permissions/saving problems on both Word and Excel files

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