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Word document stays locked after a name change (save as...)

Hello to all,

I've got a weird one.

After oneping a Word 97-2003 document with Word 2013 and renaming the document (save as...), my coworkers can't open the originale file. You get the message that it's being used by another user.

If I close the new document, thay can now open the file.

An image is worth a thousand words.

I tought that if you changed name of a document, the old one would still be available to be opened and changed by other users.

Is this a bug? And is there a workaround? 

Thanks and have a nice day.

Stephane "Steve" Halle 

Hello Stephane,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

Few more details would help us to provide a better response.

1) Are the file saved on a network or shared drive?

2) Do you find this issue with a specific document?

Provide us more information to check and help you better.

Thank you.

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I can't replicate that behaviour on this Word 2013 machine right now so I don't know whether the bug has been fixed at some stage but I am sure I have seen this in the past.

My impression is that when you open Word by double clicking a document it seems to lock that particular document while you continue to have Word open (even if you close the document by doing a SaveAs or a Close).

The obvious workarounds would be either to close Word temporarily or perhaps just duplicate the document in Windows Explorer rather than doing Word's SaveAs.

EDIT: I do seem to be able to replicate the problem if the document was in DOC format instead of docx. Perhaps it is only a problem when you are dealing with doc files.

Andrew Lockton
Melbourne Australia

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Hello Raju S Das and thanks for your time.

I'm working with Word 2013 on Windows 7 system SP1 64bits.

The document is an old .doc file format and the problem occurs with ant file on local or network drive.

Thanks again and have a nice day.

SH 

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Thanks for your time Mr Lockton.

It's one solution but I don't think that my client will be too hapy about it. They're migrating from Office XP with Win Xp to Office 2013 and Win 7.

Let's see what Microsoft has to say about it. 

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You won't get a reply from "Microsoft" here; this is a peer support forum, and the preponderance of participants are other users. Those identified as "Support Engineer" are employees of a third-party company (in India) engaged by Microsoft to provide support; they do not work for Microsoft and have no direct input to the company or knowledge of the product design and code.
Microsoft MVP (Word) since 1999
Fairhope, Alabama USA
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http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com
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Last updated October 1, 2021 Views 219 Applies to: