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Excel - Document not saved. The file may be open or an error may have been encountered while saving.

While saving a excel worksheet as a PDF, I get the error "Document not saved. The file may be open, or an error may have been encountered while saving"

I get the same error on multiple machines, all running Excel 2010 on Windows 7 64 bit. I am opening the excel file from a network location, however, I get the same error when saving and opening the file from the desktop. Different worksheets of all sizes and content either work just fine, or have the same issue above.  All files are xlsx.

Some machines will get the error above, and still save the document as a PDF where I asked it to (even to the network location).

I have checked the Knowledge base and other people's solutions, and they don't apply to my problem:

  1. KB2466146 is not installed on any of the machines.
  2. It does not work in safe mode.
  3. I am not using any add-ins.
  4. KB980232 is not installed on any of the machines.

I am puzzled, indeed.

Hello Aaron,

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

You may refer to the below link and check if it helps in resolving the issue.
 
Hope the information helps. Do reply if you need further assistance.  
 
Thank You.

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Deepak,

I have gone to the support page you mentioned, and gone through the steps:

  1. We have changed the file name to several different things, same error. The original file path is 98 characters long.
  2. We have redone the worksheets completely from scratch, same error.
  3. We have saved the files as .XPS, .HTML, and .XLS, same error when saving to PDF from these types.
  4. Excel in safe mode yields the same errors.
  5. I try saving the same worksheet on a different computer under my username (I am a domain admin), it will save as a PDF on my desktop, from my desktop sucessfully, however it will still give the error I mentioned above ("Document not saved, The file may be....") The user is having intermittent success this way too with certain worksheets, and also gets the error despite the save succeeding.

It seems like the one computer and user I am dealing with is having more trouble with this error than others, despite them being in the same OU and having the same permissions to the shared area in question.

I really appreciate your help. A re-image of this machine is something I am trying to avoid.

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Hello Aaron,

Is there any antivirus software installed in your computer? 
 
If yes, as per the below link adding an office application to an exception list of the antivirus seems to have fixed the issue, check if it helps.
 
Hope the information helps. Do reply if you need further assistance.  
 
Thank you.

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Deepak,

There is indeed AV software on all computers that I have tried to save as PDF on.

I've added Excel to the exception list, and the error still appears.

The error appears when:

  1. Saving from the network location, to the network location.
  2. Saving from the desktop, to the desktop.
  3. From the network location to the desktop, and vice versa.

However, the first time I try to save to the desktop on these machines, it works without the error. This is regardless of whether it is an exception or not in our AV software.

Also, we are getting a likely related error: When renaming a folder, we get a "Could not find this item, This is not longer located in

Could these issues be related? I'm working on finding a good solution to the folder renaming issue in hopes that it may solve both.

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We found a potential solution - In the SysWow64 folder, the t2embed.dll file had security permissions set to "deny" for everyone as part of a temporary work-around from several years ago (Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-084) while waiting for various security updates to resolve the issue with the DLL file tiself. A few of our computers unexpectedly still had the "deny" permission set for "everyone". Saving Excel and Word documents as PDF files seems to work after making this change.

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Question Info

Last updated March 20, 2025 Views 43,428 Applies to: