A reader wrote recently inquiring about the documents he takes home to work on. It seems like the documents he brings home on his flash drive always open in Read Only. I asked him if he had the same version of Word at home as he does at work and he does not. At work they are still working on Word 2003 and at home he has Word 2010, his document is a .doc versus .docx.
So after he has worked on his documents when he saves it, he has to save it using a different name because of the Read Only status. He wants to be able to save it using the same name.
It is possible that Word 2010 on his home computer doesn’t trust the files on his flash drive. He could save his document from his flash drive to his desktop and see if that makes a difference in whether it is still opened in Read Only mode. If that is the case, then he should check Word 2010’s Trust Center to set up his flash drive as a Trusted Location for his documents.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- On your Ribbon, click the File tab.
- Click Options to display the dialog box.
- On the left-hand side, click Trust Center.
- Click Trust Center Settings to display the dialog box.
- Click Trusted Locations on the left-hand side.
He can now use the controls there to set up the flash drive as a trusted location.
Sending documents to his home using e-mail could possibly cause the same issue as some e-mail clients mark documents as Read Only. Also, some security settings could make them Read Only.
Even after all of the above, you could still encounter problems with Read Only issues. There have been a number of folks who have reported this issue and there is a discussion regarding this issue on Microsoft’s Office Forum.
