word cannot open this document.

Question

I've ust installed Office for Mac 2011, but I have been getting this error "word cannot open this document. the document might be in use or might not be a valid word document, or the file name might contain invalid characters...."

If that's not enough, I cannot even create and save a file.

"Word cannot save or create this file. The disk may be full or write-protected."

Every workaround, fix that I found does not work.

More problem?  Of course!!!

Microsoft Excel cannot access the file '<path to file>:

Anyone?

Answer 1

Over here (Snow Leopard) the Finder enforces a 255 max length in folder and file names. However, Word seems to stop at 246 characters for file names (but not for folders). Even if I nest five or six 255-character folder names, Word does open the file as long as the name has 246 characters or less. Attempting to open a file with longer names produces a "File not found" error.

On my iMac, the file name you provided (109 charactrers) did not cause any problem.

I have been tracking several "Word 2011 Cannot Open File" threads on various systems. There seem to be several manifestations:

   1) Supposedly invalid character in filename.

   2) Supposedly invalid character somewhere in the pathname (including name of hard drive).

   3) Filename itself too long.

   4) File existing on a server somewhere (problem possibly stemming from 1-3 above).

For me (on OS X 10.7.5; I don't remember which cat this is), I have the issue baked down to a single problem (local hard drive only):

   Word 2011 (purchased via Office 365 product) WILL NOT OPEN a file, either by double-click or from Open Dialog, if the PATHNAME has a SEMICOLON in it. If the filename itself has a semicolon, it opens no problem. But if a semicolon is in ANY folder name in the path, no can do. This is totally reproducible. Remove semicolons from folder names, file will open. Put semicolon back in, no can do.

   Guess what: I use tons of semicolons in folder names. So, Word 2011 is basically unusable for me. I refuse to rename folders to use the product; I refuse to pull every document I want to use to the desktop and then return it to the offending semicolon-burdened folder after I'm done.

   As others have noted, Excel 2011 and PowerPoint 2011 do NOT seem to have this problem.

   Other testing: for me, other supposedly invalid characters (including slash, backslash, bullet, and others) in the path do not cause a problem. Oddly, a slash in the filename itself DOES make the file "no open." Go figure.

HERE'S THE BIG QUESTION: After 4 years and these postings all over the universe, Microsoft is definitely aware of this ridiculous bug in JUST ONE of their flagship modules of Office. Why no fix?! When will it get fixed?! I mean, come on guys! Ask the Excel 2011 team, or even the Word 2008 team, how they pulled off the amazing feat of opening a file with a ";" in the pathname. Make us proud!

Answer 2

Had the same issue opening Word/PPT/Excel files from my shared desktop. Both hard drives had the same name -- 'Macintosh HD'. Once I changed the name of my one of my drives all was well.

Answer 3

You are right. The real cause for the problem are not the special characters (even though Word 2011 reports that), but the path length. The same problem that have had Excel for years and now has Word 2011 as well:

See:

Cannot open file using Excel 2011 because "The file path is too long"

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2011-macexcel/cannot-open-file-using-excel-2011-because-the-file/61673d25-06b7-449f-aae2-4d49dbf85308

No problem in such a case for Word 2004, PowerPoint 2004 or PowerPoint 2011.

Answer 4

Problem 1: To the most recent versions of Word, the forward slash is not a valid character for file names, just like the colon is not valid in the Finder. If you add a slash to a file name from the Finder, attempting to open it will result in your first error message. I'm not discarding other causes, but that is surely one of them.

Problem 2: Attempting to save to a locked destination folder will result in your second error message. Do a Get Info in the Finder and uncheck the "Locked" setting. Again, there may be other reasons.

Reinstalling is seldom worth it, unless files within the Microsoft Office 2011 folder have become corrupted and/or you've deleted the various folders, fonts and preferences created by the Office suite once it has been run. Otherwise, all these will stay put.

Can you describe your steps for selecting another folder?

Answer 5

I would guess the path contains an invalid character (at least, one that Office considers invalid). After the recent updates, the set of invalid characters now has only one member: the forward slash. So…

1. Make sure you got everything updated (Help > Check for updates)
2. Check the folder name, and that of the folder containing it, etc., all the way to your hard disk, for the presence of a slash

If the above cannot fix the issue, could you enumerate the things that you've already tried?