Yosemite locks MS Word

[jeremy14]

I recently upgraded to Yosemite. For word processing I use MS Office for Mac 2008. Since upgrading I find all my Word documents locked and am unable to edit them. The only way I have around found this problem is to open them in Pages, edit and convert the document back to Word. There must be an easier way of getting around this problem. Is there any way of unlocking these? This does not happen to Excel spreadsheets.

 

[vansmith]

You can right click them > Get Info > uncheck Locked under General.

 

[dtravis7]

Good catch Van. I just wonder why they are locked after he upgraded? I will have to check my word files later.

 

[vansmith]

Sometimes files get locked when migrating them. From reading various "locked files" threads, it seems that moving files across drives does this sometimes.

 

[jeremy14]

Many thanks for all your suggestions, but this gets stranger and stranger. Upon booting up my iMac this morning I find that none of my Word files are locked, so I celebrated, but too soon. I was able to edit some old ones that I no longer need. Lo and behold it worked. But I celebrated too soon. "Save" was greyed out and I couldn't close the file by clicking on the Red button as that was greyed as well. All I could do was minimise it into the Dock. Any more bright suggestions? Most items are greyed out in the drop down menus now. When the edited files are open even Quit Word is greyed out.

 

[jeremy14]

I'm back now after my lunch with a gin & tonic. I had a problem shutting down last time as Word would not shut down and I had to Force Quit it. Is MS trying to take over the world and will the Apple Empire strike back? Having booted up again I find everything working normally and as one would expect it to work. Whatever could have happened? I think that this is the end of this thread. Thank you folks.