This behaviour may occur if Word determines that the owner file for the document already exists. This may occur if one or more of the following conditions are true:
Word previously quit improperly and, therefore, did not delete the owner file. -or- A second instance of Word is running in the background with the document already open. -or- The document is shared over a network, and another user has it open.
From my personal experience, I've found a combination of the first and third point above can recreate this error quite constantly.
Temp files, left next to the original file on the network (especially if the file is large, she copy-pastes a LOT or it is open all day) are the cause.
To resolve this issue, first confirm that another user on the network does not have the document open. If the document is in use, open the document as read-only. If it is not in use, quit all instances of Word, and then remove the owner file. To do so, follow these steps.
NOTE: Because there are several versions of Microsoft Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, see your product documentation to complete these steps.
Quit all instances of Word. To do so, follow these steps: 1. Save all your work, and then quit all programs. 2. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to open the Windows Security dialog box. 3. Click Task Manager, and then click the Processes tab. 4. Click Winword.exe, and then click End Process. 5. In the Task Manager Warning dialog box, click Yes. If you receive a message that states that the program is not responding, click End Now. 6. Repeat steps d and e for each occurrence of Winword.exe. 7. On the File menu, click Exit Task Manager. Start Windows Explorer, and then browse to the folder that contains the document file that you tried to open when you received the error message. Delete the owner file.
The owner file is located in the same folder as the document that you tried to open. The owner file name uses the following convention: It begins with a tilde (~), followed by a dollar sign ($), followed by the remainder of the document file name. The file name extension is .doc. For example, the owner file for Document.doc is named ~$cument.doc. Start Word. If Word asks you whether you want to load the changes that were made to the Global or Normal template, click No. Open your document.
Additional note for documents shared over a network:
If there are multiple people that could be editing the doc, it can sometimes be hard to figure out who might have the doc open. As shown on TechTalkMadness, the best way to find the answer is to use Computer Management on the system that hosts the shared file.
Go to Computer Management -> System Tools -> Shared Folders -> Open Files to find out who has a document locked. If the user can't be contacted to disconnect themselves, you can forcefully do so by right clicking the locked file and selecting Close Open File (warning: the user might lose their changes)."
"Try turning off the Indexing service I had this and resolved it by turning off Indexing Service in Windows. The effect was instant, so I suspect Indexing service had deadlocked on the file in question. On XP, Turn off indexing service like this: click the Start button, then Search. From the window that opens, choose Change preferences (bottom left). Click ""Without Indexing Service"", the ""No, do not enable Indexing service"" radio button, and OK. I found the problem by downloading handle.exe. handle.exe tells you which program has the file open, and in my case it turned out to be cidaemon.exe. A quick google confirmed that it is the actual indexer of Windows' indexing service. Thanks Microsoft, another 2 hours of value added to my day."
"I had the exact same issue. Couldn't open file on a network share to edit. But none of suggestions helped.
Turned out that the issue was as follows: Previously computer was being used and logged in by a local account. After I joined AD, i copied Application Data and Local Settings folder (on Windows XP) to AD user profile. After the operation i later discovered that Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office didn't have permissions for newly created user and thus office was prompting me with this dialog for every file. I had previously tried disabling firewall/antivirus on host and client machines, disabling indexing service on host machine, but none helped.
So i set appropriate permissions for Office folder and everything now works."
"Here is what I found in our environment. All users ""My Documents"" maps to a network share on our SAN. We run a terminal server with Office installed that utilizes the same network share on our SAN. If an end user is using an Office product, and then does not log off completely but rather X out, the the file is shown as locked by the person who installed Office on the terminal server (yours truly).
If the end user logs back in to the disconnected terminal server session and logs off properly, the Office application is then closed and the file is unlocked."
