Microsoft Office
If you experience Microsoft Office applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook) opening documents read only, opening documents slowly, failing to open documents or failing to save documents, review the sections below for the most likely causes of the problems.
Disable Always Create Backup In Excel
Ensure that always create backup is disabled on the Excel save as dialog. Go to the file menu and choose save as. Click Browse so the save as dialog box appears. Click the tools menu bottom right. Click the general options item. Then ensure always create backup is disabled:
Resave XLS 95 As Newer Format
If the document you are saving is an old XLS 95 format document then resave the document as XLS 97 format or the modern XSLX format. XLS format files can cause issues with co-authoring.
Disable the Excel Solver Plugin
A plugin called “Solver” by Microsoft can cause Excel documents to open read only. Turn off the plugin. More information here on the Solver plugin can be found here:
Disable Always Create Backup Copy In Word
If the Word setting Always create backup copy is enabled and Word is opened for exclusive editing, then you may experience issues when saving. To resolve, disable the setting. From Word, click File then Options. The select the Advanced tab on the popup dialog. Scroll down to the Save section and disable the Always create backup copy setting:
The UNC Server Name Is Conflicting Or Has Non-Alphanumeric Characters
If the UNC server name you have assigned to the network drive contains spaces, other non-alphanumeric characters, or conflicts with another server on the local network, it may cause issues, particularly for Excel.
Check sections The UNC Server Name Contains A Space Character and UNC Server Name Conflict On The Network on how to resolve.
Spaces in the server name may cause issues for hyperlinks in work sheets within an Excel document.
File Path Exceeds 260 Characters
If the path to the document or folder to be opened in Office exceeds the 260 Windows path character limit then the document may not be opened or the containing folder may not be accessible to Office. E.g. If opening an Outlook MSG file that has a path longer than 260 characters, Outlook will show an error.
Whilst Zee Drive and SharePoint Online support URL path lengths up to 400 characters, Windows, and Office, have their own idiosyncratic path length limitations.
Disable File Explorer Preview Pane
If documents open locked or read only, try disabling the Windows File Explorer preview pane as this has been reported to cause this problem.
Access Denied Opening A ZeeDrive: Link From Outlook
When using the Zee Drive send link feature and the recipient of the link subsequently clicking the link in an email in Outlook, the link may fail to open with an error from Outlook: Access denied. You may also receive the error from other Office apps E.g. when clicking a Zee Drive link in OneNote or Word.
This can be caused by Windows Defender ASR (Attack Surface Reduction) policies blocking child processes from launching which effectively stops the ZeeDrive.exe process from launching to open the hyperlink. These are the specific ASR policies:
Block Office communication application from creating child processes (rule GUID 26190899-1602-49e8-8b27-eb1d0a1ce869)
Block all Office applications from creating child processes (rule GUID d4f940ab-401b-4efc-aadc-ad5f3c50688a)
To resolve, add exceptions for the two ASR rules to Windows Defender for the ZeeDrive.exe process. You can add an exception To Windows Defender via Intune or via Group Policy.
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