How to edit a read only document.

I am at my wits end with this problem and would be very grateful for a solution.

I have a document, in Dropbox though now copied to the Documents folder, which I wrote myself some years ago. I use Apache Open Office but the document is saved as an MS Word.

I have edited this document hundreds of times without a hitch. The other day I attempted to alter the document but, to my surprise, I found it had become 'read only'.

I have tried renaming the doc; I have emailed it to my wife's PC ( she also uses Windows 10 with a recent version of MS Word to find that she also cannot amend it and I have also tried a number of other purported solutions found on the web but all to no avail.

Can anyone assist me please

Are the file properties set to read only? Often the quick solution is copy content into a new doc

Hello Samura,

I have just copied and pasted the document into a new folder but it is still stuck as 'read only'.
Now regarding file properties, this is a tricky one. I have tried giving full control to the potential owners but I find the procedure for doing this difficult. I have managed to give full control to my user account though I admit I have been unable to give full control to SYSTEM. However, none of my other files seem to need full control in order that I can amend.

Try and copy the content of the doc into a new blank doc (not copy the doc as a file)
Check file attributes and not the permissions (r/c file, properties, attributes). Is it read only here?

gordon99 said:

...none of my other files seem to need full control in order that I can amend.

Is it possible that at some time in the past you password-protected this particular Word document? Maybe the 'read only' has nothing to do with file permissions, but is a setting within the Word document itself.

Hello Bree,

You are quite correct. I did have this document password protected and I did this shortly before the problem commenced. As you might expect I removed the password protection in case this was the root of the problem but this has had no effect.

However, I am very interested in what you say and I wonder if you could expand when you mention 'a setting within the Word document itself'. If this is the root cause, which I am very inclined to think it is, is there a way around this of which you have knowledge?

This is the sort of thing I was talking about....

Microsoft Office Support said:

Make a document read only
Applies To: Word 2016 Word 2013 Word 2010 Word 2007

https://support.office.com/en-gb/art...16,_2013,_2010

Hello all, especially robgr.

Success at last.

I have just tried your suggested method robgr and low and behold it worked. I am very grateful for all your responses. I am ashamed to tell how many hours I have spent trying to solve this particular problem when the solution sent by robgr was so easy to do.

I am pretty sure the problem stemmed from putting a password onto the file but the reason may be one of those 'unknown unknowns'

Thank you all for your help.