Read-only Error Message

Question

After downloading my recent purchase of Office 365 offline, whenever I try to open and edit an existing document, I get a Read-only error message like this:

How do I remove the read-only format? 

Below is what I have on my MacBook Air. Thank you!

Answer 1

Thank you for your responses Jess - I do appreciate it. I will try to answer your questions. The old docs were created in an older version of Office fro Mac. All of the docs were created by me, so it seems I should have permission. Frankly, I am not confident I have a clear understanding of some of the suggestion I have received... but one thing I notice is when I save a document to the iCloud Drive, it saves fine. Thank you.

Answer 2

Try renaming the file without using special characters such as commas, dashes and slashes.

Answer 3

Interesting. This is may likely be a due to the difference in the version of Office the files were authored from. We  recommend posting this issue in the Customer Feedback for Microsoft Office 365.

Let us know should you have any other more concerns.

Answer 4

Hi Jess. Thank you for this prompt reply. My old docs were created in an old Office version (possibly 2011) for Mac. I checked the link you provided but it appears their issue is somewhat different than mine.

Thanks again for your assistance!

Dan

Answer 5

Hi Dan,

This error often points to an issue in the sharing permission from the Word program of the author. Another issue like this has been reported just a few weeks back seemed to suggest that the Office version needed to be updated. You may check this link here.

We would also like to know if the documents you were trying to open created using the for Mac version of Office or for Windows.

Let us know of any feedback you might have or should you have any more concerns.