Lost access to excel files

I have a user who has lost access to some excel files on a mapped drive. They had access yesterday, and upon turning on their computer this morning they no longer can open the files. They can see them, but when they try to open, Excel says the files are set to read only or are encrypted. This is not the case. Others who have access to the same drive and files can read them just fine.

I've deleted their access to the directory and re-established it, but still get same error. Any ideas?

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

RobertKaucher

Bokeh wrote: »

I have a user who has lost access to some excel files on a mapped drive. They had access yesterday, and upon turning on their computer this morning they no longer can open the files. They can see them, but when they try to open, Excel says the files are set to read only or are encrypted. This is not the case. Others who have access to the same drive and files can read them just fine.

I've deleted their access to the directory and re-established it, but still get same error. Any ideas?

Try rebooting the system the files are hosted on. There may be some sort of lock on them that is causing the error. Only thing I can think of....

mrmcmint

Can you give the exact error? I know there is a file in the users profile you need to delete.

brad-

Bokeh wrote: »

I've deleted their access to the directory and re-established it, but still get same error. Any ideas?

You might could try going under advanced security settings for that user(s)/group and check the box to "replace permission ... "

Bokeh

Person is finally back in the office, and the exact error message is as follows:

"Excel cannot access (file name). The document may be read only or encrypted."

Then there is an ok box, clicking on that gives "Cannot access (file name)"

RobertKaucher

Could you run cacls on the file and post the output?
I would also like to see the output of

cipher /c C:\path\file.xls

EDIT: Just to add to my comment here. Every time I have ever seen this issue it was a permissions problem. And I have seen the Windows GUI lie in the past. For example I have seen a server set with the DFG of 192.168.1.1 when you click properties for TCP/IP on the network card, but then when you look at route print it had something else set as the DFG. My theory was that someone was running a command of some sort via CMD and changed the DFG, but this setting change did not propogate to the GUI. So I am wondering if something has not changed that you are unaware of and that Explorer is not showing.