An owner file is temporary and holds the logon name of the person who opens the document. Word creates an owner file when you open a previously saved Word document. If Word asks you whether you want to load the changes that were made to the Global or Normal template, click No.
For example, the owner file for Document.doc is named ~$cument.doc. The owner file name uses the following convention: It begins with a tilde (~), followed by a dollar sign ($), followed by the remainder of the document file name. The owner file is located in the same folder as the document that you tried to open.
#Excel file is locked for editing by another user windows#
Start Windows Explorer, and then browse to the folder that contains the document file that you tried to open when you received the error message. On the File menu, click Exit Task Manager.
Repeat steps d and e for each occurrence of Winword.exe. If you receive a message that states that the program is not responding, click End Now. In the Task Manager Warning dialog box, click Yes. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to open the Windows Security dialog box.Ĭlick Task Manager, and then click the Processes tab.Ĭlick Winword.exe, and then click End Process.
Save all your work, and then quit all programs. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps. NOTE: Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If it is not in use, quit all instances of Word, and then remove the owner file. If the document is in use, open the document as read-only. To resolve this issue, first confirm that another user on the network does not have the document open. The document is shared over a network, and another user has it open. Word previously quit improperly and, therefore, did not delete the owner file.Ī second instance of Word is running in the background with the document already open. This may occur if one or more of the following conditions are true: This behavior may occur if Word determines that the owner file for the document already exists. To open a read-only copy of his document, click.įile name is the name of the document that you tried to open.
I guess, theres something wrong with the AD user "user XYZ", since he seems to be the only affected user.File name is locked for editing by another user. If you are seeing issues where the wrong user name is showing up, there is a known bug on that and a fix: In cases where the wrong user name is displayed in the file lock dialog Sometimes where it says another user it has the name of someone that didnt open the file or it has no name at all. No one, with the exception oft the person who's trying to open it legitimately, has opend the file -> we've all file audit policies enabled, no according entries in the event logs It's not the temporary ownership file “~$ myfile.doc” If a user tries to open a file (word or excel) he's getting the well know message saying the file is “locked for editing by 'user XYZ'” -> the user who is allegedly "locking" the files (user XYZ) is always the same one and it's a simple domain user, no domain admin or such.įurthermore: "user XYZ" has never opened these files, since, according to the ACLs, he's not allowed to do so. Sometimes we are experiencing a strange effect on our file servers and all the usual/known reasons cannot explain it: