Afternoon all.

I have an IOmega External hard drive, and I have a question regarding it.

I have been having a problem with some of my documents. I can, using Word 13, create a document, save it to my documents folder, then copy it to my external. As soon as I do, it gets converted to a read only file. I spoke with Microsoft accessibility, and they thought the problem was solved, but not so. I spoke with a computer expert, and I was told to transfer all of the files/folders to another device, format the external, then re-transfer all materials back to the external, and that should solve the problem.

So, here is my question. Is there anything I need to keep on there before I format it? I never formatted the device; I just started using it out of the box. I am using JAWS 2018 and Windows 10 on a Dell laptop. Thanks in advance.

Jerry

Afternoon all.

I have an IOmega External hard drive, and I have a question regarding it.

I have been having a problem with some of my documents. I can, using Word 13, create a document, save it to my documents folder, then copy it to my external. As soon as I do, it gets converted to a read only file. I spoke with Microsoft accessibility, and they thought the problem was solved, but not so. I spoke with a computer expert, and I was told to transfer all of the files/folders to another device, format the external, then re-transfer all materials back to the external, and that should solve the problem.

So, here is my question. Is there anything I need to keep on there before I format it? I never formatted the device; I just started using it out of the box. I am using JAWS 2018 and Windows 10 on a Dell laptop. Thanks in advance.

Jerry

Afternoon all.

I have an IOmega External hard drive, and I have a question regarding it.

I have been having a problem with some of my documents. I can, using Word 13, create a document, save it to my documents folder, then copy it to my external. As soon as I do, it gets converted to a read only file. I spoke with Microsoft accessibility, and they thought the problem was solved, but not so. I spoke with a computer expert, and I was told to transfer all of the files/folders to another device, format the external, then re-transfer all materials back to the external, and that should solve the problem.

So, here is my question. Is there anything I need to keep on there before I format it? I never formatted the device; I just started using it out of the box. I am using JAWS 2018 and Windows 10 on a Dell laptop. Thanks in advance.

Jerry

JM:

I am not sure. I have gone through all of the aspects for saving the documents, and none of them are set to read only. I can use the applications key, and there is an option to open the documents in read only. It is a real aggravation; because I can copy the file from the external to my documents folder on my lptop, edit it, and send it back. then upon opening the specific file, it will have the changes on it. Thanks for the reply.

When you say “read only”, do you mean the protected view in Word, or the file attributes themselves are set to read only?

You don’t need to keep anything on the drive. In fact when you format, everything will be deleted. Everything. You will be starting with a clean slate, as it were.

Okay. I did as you suggested, and upon opening the properties, there is no compatibility tab. So... what next? Thanks for your help.

Interesting. Well it doesn’t sound like protected mode, but something more connected with the operating system.

There are two factors that might be involved. File attributes or permissions. Essentially you need to take “ownership” of the drive, so you can modify the files on it.

You can try this. It might not be a permanent solution because it could potentially open you up to vulnerabilities. But if you don’t open a lot of macro enabled files from the Internet, you should be ok. There is probably a better way to solve this problem but it’s complicated and without looking at your system and heavy recourse to google it’d just be too much to explain over the list.

So try:

Go to your word shortcut, assuming you have one.

Hit alt-enter to open the properties.

Go to the compatibility tab.

Check the box that says “run this programme as an administrator”.

Now, every time you start Word, the “user account control” box will probbably open. But you can hit alt-y to say yes, and Word will open, and likely your documents will no longer say “read only”.

No guarantee that this will work, but try it.

There’s definitely a way around this that doesn’t involve formatting.

Using the control tab keys, there is the shortcut, security, details, previous versions and general tabs.

Are you sure?

It should be just to the right of the shortcut tab.

It’s probably better though to have your user account take ownership of the drive.

It’s a little bit complicated and I don’t have time to give instructions right now. I’ve only done this a few times and it’s a little tricky.

But I might be able to come back later if noone else chimes in.

Just for confirmations sake, I opened one of these documents on my external drive, went to file, then options. The checkbox for opening in an uneditable format was not checked. As you said, WEIRD!

That’s certainly odd. You’re seeing every tab in the box except for the one that you need to do this. lol

You could use the context menu to run as administrator. Just arrow down until you hear the option. But you’ll have to do this every time until a better solution is found, probably.