Networking 3 Windows 10 machines

Joe,

You do not have a network problem.

I thik you have just posted that the admin user account Joe has the same password on every computer. Good.

Now I urge you to review those strange sharing permissions.

Denis

Joe,

That's what I would do but, as long as you have made a recent system image of each computer, you could just delete those additional sharing entries because that change might be enough to allow Word to see the network clearly -

MOMSLAPTOP//DadsLaptop,
MOMSLAPTOP//Joe, and
MOMSLAPTOP//Sue

If that fixes things you could leave everything else as it was if you wanted.

Clearly I have unnecessarily over-complicated things

Not really. Jack spotted it very early on but I didn't.

Denis

Joe,

Is your ultimate objective to stave off lunacy by using your time productively while the plague keeps you in the house?
Do these computers have all their user files and the OS on the same disk?

If so then consider adding an extra disk or partitioning the single disk into two partitions, one for OS-applications and one for user files.
- Safe partitioning does necessitate making system images [which might be large] so you can get back to square one if it all goes haywire.
- If you only have the OS-applications on one disk/partition, it makes system images much smaller & faster so you are more likely to make them more often so, in turn, you are more likely to be able to recover from software faults more quickly & less painfully.
- If you are ever going to do this job then doing it now [before tidying up the network] would save a lot of repetition. I started doing this a decade ago and would never consider mixing OS-applications with user files these days. I have since rather got the impression that other people realised this two decades ago.

Just a thought,
Denis

PS Does Sue know that you categorise the world into two groups of people -
1 Everyone, and
2 Sue?