I cannot save word documents on my macbook air, how do i fix this?

Question

When I try and save my word documents either a pop up comes up saying I don’t have permission to do this, or it won’t let me name the document and choose a place for it to go on my macbook air.  I now can’t save any of my documents, so I went onto Microsoft support and found others who had the same issue, I followed the instructions given to those people but when I went into system settings – privacy and security and clicked on files and folders like the instructions said but word does not let me click on it at all, all of the other apps on that page will let me click on them but word doesn’t have that option. I then went onto full disk access but it shows that word already has it so I am very confused.

Answer 1

Hi WEIGHT, Mariska (mweig3)

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A Forum and sharing your experience.

Since this post is tagged as "For education", the first step is to verify your account status. If you are signing in with an educational (school‑managed) Microsoft account, please contact your school’s IT administrator to confirm that your Microsoft 365 license is active and properly assigned.

If your IT administrator confirms that your license is valid and active, please proceed with the steps below.

Because Microsoft Word already appears under Full Disk Access, the next step is to reset Word’s macOS permissions so the system can re‑prompt correctly:

• Quit all Office applications completely, including Word.
• Open System Settings > Privacy & Security.
• Select Full Disk Access, locate Microsoft Word, and temporarily turn it off.
• Restart your Mac.
• Return to Full Disk Access and re‑enable Microsoft Word.
• Open Word and test saving a new document to your Documents folder.

If the issue persists, please also check folder‑level permissions. Open Finder, right‑click the folder you are trying to save to, select Get Info, and confirm your user account has Read & Write access under Sharing & Permissions.

Additionally, please verify whether the issue occurs when saving to different locations, such as the Desktop versus the Documents folder.

Please let me know how things go on your side as your update can also assist others in the community who may be facing the same issue.

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