Cannot save an excel file to any location on C:

W10 18362.449 Office 2016.
I can open a excel file that sits on my desktop, change something and Excel will not allow me to Save As or Save it back to its original position or any other location on the C: Can save to another drive without issue. Had this problem before and resolved itself in a short period, but now it is persistent.
i.e Open new sheet, put a 1 in A1 and try to save it to desktop or another location on C: and get this error message. Can't find the file when I am trying to create it?

meebers said:

W10 18362.449 Office 2016.
I can open a excel file that sits on my desktop, change something and Excel will not allow me to Save As or Save it back to its original position or any other location on the C: Can save to another drive without issue....

It sounds like you have Ransomware Protection turned on in Windows Security. You can check to see if it has recently blocked your Excel. See Option One in this tutorial, at Step 5 click 'Recently blocked apps'. If Excel appears there, add it to the list of allowed apps.

when an app is blocked, it will appear in a recently blocked apps list. Click/tap on the plus Add an allowed app button and choose Recently blocked apps. Select any of the apps to add them to the allowed list.

Add or Remove Allowed Apps for Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10

Bree, you are amazing and 100% correct. Excel.exe was being blocked since Sept 2019. I would have never thought to look there. It now saves like it should! There were several others there like, MSPUB, WinWord, mini tool partition wizard and others as I scrolled down thru 3 pages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tx again, marking solved.

Yes, I suspected you'd find others, now you know where to look.