Word opening files as Read only.

I suddenly have a strange issue with MS Word. If in Windows Explorer I have the "Tools | Folder Options | View | Show Preview Handlers in Preview Pane" turned on and then try to open a Word document, it opens as read only. If I turn off that option the file does not open in read only mode. I have Excel files in the same folder and they do not exhibit this behavior. They do not open in read only mode regardless of the previer handler setting.

This just started happening today. No updates were applied today and yes I did reboot the machine with no improvement. If I copy the file to the desktop and open it from there it does not open as read only (because there is no preview handler in play). Clearly the preview handler is marking the file as open, so Word thinks I am opening a second copy and puts it in read only mode as it should if I truly did have another copy open. But I don't, I only have the Windows Explorer preview of the file.

Anyone else have a clue on this. I have found several Google references to folks seeing this but no solution other than to turn off the preview handlers.

Gary

 

Update: If I click the "Hide the Preview Pane" button in the upper right corner of Windows Explorer (see attachment) and then open the file it does NOT open as read only. So this proves the issue is the preview handler marking the file as open. But why??? And why only Word files?

Gary

 

I'm guessing the preview handler gets stuck when trying to preview, i.e. the process is still executed and working on the file so Word thinks the file is open(or trying to open) and locks it as read-only.

Since it's a sudden issue and only related to doc files I'd blame the registry and try the following:
1. Registry cleanup/fix. Some application might've messed up the handler api's reg entries for doc files. Might want to reboot after that.
2. Delete doc/docx extension from the known extensions then recreated it by opening the same type of files and configure Word as default program.
Reg cleanup after deleting the extension might be a good idea too, hopefully the system will either a) cleanup all the reg entries for doc files so when you assign it again it will be "clean" assigning or b) recreate corrupted/missing registry entries(doubt it but still).
.

 

Did you manage to isolate and solve the problem? Just curious, it's rather unusual issue.

 

I did not solve it, but as it turns out it was limited to one file. Nothing special about that file that I could discern. Very odd though. The word file in question was saved in DOC format (not DOCX). And it was six pages of jpg scanned images of an NDA a client wanted me to sign. I had scanned the signed pages and sent them to him as six JPG files that he was unable to print. (Don't even ask. Sigh...) So I put the six pages into this word file and saved it as a DOC file so he could print them. When I opened it the strange readonly behavior occurred. I now suspect it was because the Word preview handler was calling a jpg preview handler to deal with the preview of the document in Windows Explorer. But I just tried to create a test DOC file with nothing but a JPG image in it and had no such issue. So I am stumped. But at least it was just the one file (thus far).

Gary

 

Hmm, I have seen similar things, in which cases it was just a matter of the preview handler being really slow. Have you ever tried simply waiting for a while after clicking on the file to get the preview, before then attempting to open it? Of course, it's always possible that the preview handler just hangs indefinitely when trying to parse your file, and thus never releases the handle. I guess as long as it's just this single file, it's nothing but a curiosity, and nothing that would warrant investing a lot of energy in.

 

Interesting idea. So much so I had to give it a try. The document is 6 pages long and each page is completely filled by a JPG of a scanned image from the NDA. I just tried scrolling through all six pages in the preview pane of Windows Explorer and then opened the document. It still opened as Read Only though.

And the issue is most assuredly the preview handler because if I move the document to the desktop (or open it via "recent documents" it opens just fine with no read only tag on the title-bar of the window.

Gary

 

doc files could randomly mess up and then happen to result in all sort of issues. so far, with docx, i haven't seen this happen over the thousands of clients we have. i'm glad the doc format is gone. repairing broken files was really annoying. sometimes they open perfectly, are editable, but can't print anymore. irritating stuff. solution was always: mark everything, copy, paste into new document. save with same name.

 

Just for the hell of it, I just opened the DOC file and saved it as DOCX. Then opened the DOCX version and it did NOT open as read only. So it would appear there is something to be said about your comment!

Gary

 

If i would be allowed to, I would have ran by now a converter over our work network to get rid of anything .doc, .xls, .ppt and so on...