Can't type in Word

Question

I can't type in Word. When I attempt to type, a message appears at bottom of screen saying "You can't make this change because selection is locked."

Answer 1

Hi TFinnerty,

There are several reasons that "You can't make this change because selection is locked." could happen.

The guide below list the various reasons & fixes.

https://windowsfish.com/fix-you-cant-make-this-...

How do fix “You Can’t Make this Change because the Selection is Locked” Error?

Seriously speaking, this is not much of an issue. We can solve it easily by just following the below mentioned steps:

Simply switching to the normal “print layout” view will help you edit the document.

Click on the View tab at the top.

Now select Edit Document from the drop down list.

This can also be done by clicking on the “print layout” view button at the bottom-right corner of the window, next to the “zoom” control.

Now by default Word might try opening documents in view only or rear only mode. Even that is not much of a problem. To stop Word from always opening documents in reading view perform the following steps:

Click on the File menu .

Select Options from the drop down list.

Under the heading Start up options, un-check the box labeled “Open e-mail attachments and other uneditable files in reading view”.

Click OK

The following methods can also be tried.

Method 1. Disable Restrict Editing

To disable ‘restrict editing’ feature of MS Office perform the following steps.

Click anywhere on the protected area

The “Restrict Editing” pane will display on the right side.

Simply select “Step Protection” button to unlock protected part of the document.

Method 2. Disable Mark as Final

In case the Word document is marked as final and you can’t edit it. You just need to click the “Edit Anyway” button that highlight in the head of the page. It is only one-time operation, so you have to perform this step everytime.

Method 3. Activate Office

II case you are using a trial version of Office 2016 that is usually pre-installed on a new computer which has expired, then in order to unlock selection in Word, you have to purchase a retail copy . But if you have licensed copy, perhaps the problem is just that you have not yet activated it. To activate your account you just need to follow the below steps:

Select the “File” tab in the document

Click “Account” option.

Type your 25-character product key to activate Office Word 2016.

Method 4.Create New Document

Probably the easeeet method to deal siwi this issie would be simply importing the document with locked table into a new, blank document. This method should copy all of the content without any document protection included by pasting it to another new document. You can then easily edit the contents of this new document.

And you are done. These were the top methods to solve the ‘You can’t make this change because the selection is locked’ problem . You must have successfully fixed the issue.

Final Take!

I hope that you were able to fix ‘You can’t make this change because the selection is locked’ successfully. In case if you face any difficulty, please feel free to comment and let us know. We will get back to you as soon as possible. I hope you found the article informative and enjoyed reading it. This is all for the day. Thanks for reading!

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If the document that you are editing is a protected document, then you have to "allow changes to parts of a protected document"

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Allow-...

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Another reason, if the document is not read-only and not protected in some other way, it could be that you have an Office subscription that has expired.

This is valid only if you have Office 2016 through Office 365.

Regards,

Lee

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Answer 2

Hi TFinnerty,

I go through your post, you mentioned that you can’t type because “You can't make this change because selection is locked.” Based on that information, there are some thread in the same situation with you. Although you are using Word on Mac, I think you can try to troubleshoot the issue following the article Microsoft Word message: "You can't make this change because this selection is locked." Since some steps also applies to your OS. Besides, to check if your document is locked, you can right click the document>get info to check it, here is a screenshot:

If information above don’t help you out, for further troubleshoot, could you please share us with information below?

1.       Your MacOS versionand Office version.

2.       Have you done any changes before the issue happens?

3.       Is it a shared document or just edited by yourself?

Regards,

Robinson

Answer 3

Hi TFinnerty,

Can you type in Word now? Feel free to post back if the issue is unsolved.

Regards,

Robinson