Naturally, this will cause the original user to lose whatever changes were made to the file, so you should use this power carefully. If users are extremely persistent about having access to a particular file, they can force the original user off the network, closing the file. Sometimes users don’t like to open identical files, and the person holding the file open may have gone home for the day.

The user can then save the changes in a different file. The user can either wait until the current user exits the file, or they can open a copy of the file to make changes on. If a user tries to open a file on a network and the file is locked, Word will display a dialog box informing the user that someone else is using the file. This prevents users from simultaneously making changes to a file, which can cause confusion and data loss. In a networked environment, Microsoft Word locks data files on a network preventing them from being edited by more than one person at a time. You should be able to retrieve at least portions of the document, if not the entire thing, if you take time to carefully identify what’s causing the problems and using these tricks to get around them. The key to getting data out of Word documents that won’t load is to not panic. Whether networked or stand-alone, documents may also fail to open because the data file itself is corrupted or because the file is being loaded from a damaged floppy disk. In a networked environment, documents may fail to open due to permission problems or file sharing problems. But to recover information from a Word document that doesn’t open, follow these steps. Most of the time, Word documents load with little problem. In fact, there is probably a lot of very important corporate information tied up inside Word documents in your organization. If there’s one application that’s used more often than just about any other, it’s probably Microsoft Word. Try these tips to help make the recovery. When a Word file refuses to open, you need a way to get to the information without losing data. Microsoft Word is used to hold a lot of corporate data on a daily basis.

What to do when a Word document won’t open

Why is my word not opening on mac