Office Documents Opening As Read Only

Cause

A recent Microsoft Office update has caused a 'read-only' issue in older versions of Office, including 2016, 2019 and in some cases 2021.

We have investigated this issue as far as we can but ultimately the fix lies with Microsoft.

During our investigations we found success resolving this issue in Practices using the following four options, and we suggest you consider these as next steps to resolving any outstanding issues you still have:

Suggested Workarounds

• As a very immediate workaround, users can close the affected document and reopen from the "FYI - My Edits" folder
• If you are not already using FYI Desktop, then try this approach as some practices have reported this resolved the issue - FYI Desktop App
• To permanently resolve the underlying issue, where possible:
  • Upgrade to the latest version of Office 365
  • Alternatively, rollback the latest Office update that caused the issue

If you have any further questions please let us know

We are aware of an issue impacting some users attempting to edit Office documents in OneDrive which open as read only.

The issue does not occur when using the online version of the Office app, and may be caused by a security setting within the desktop version of the application or recent update to the Office suite.

By clicking File > Info with the document opened, a message will be displayed on why the file was opened in read-only.

Please screenshot this and send to your IT so they can review the Office security settings and guidance from Microsoft in this article.

We have logged a ticket with Microsoft on the issue and recommend your IT log a service request referencing ticket #35425158‎.