The document could not be opened.

I was able to resolve the issue. In Console I noticed an error occurring every 5 seconds. "Remote account store returned fatal error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4099 "The connection to service on pid 0 named com.apple.accountsd.accountmanager was invalidated." UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=The connection to service on pid 0 named com.apple.accountsd.accountmanager was invalidated.}". This was occurring to a process called "appstoreagent".

A search for that process on the forum led me to this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250768095. It recommended signing out of the iCloud account, rebooting, and then signing back in to iCloud. This did the trick. The errors went away in Console, and I can now open all document types.

Hi colomv,

Thanks for reaching out in Apple Support Communities. I understand you're unable to open documents from Office 365 in macOS Catalina. I can help provide you additional information.

To help troubleshoot this behavior, I recommend following the steps outlined in this article: Choose an app to open a file on Mac This may help to open the files for Office 365.

If that does not help, the next step is to review the permissions under your user log in. Here's how: Change permissions for files, folders, or disks on Mac To help resolve issues with permissions, you'll want to follow the appropriate steps in this helpful article: Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder

Best regards.

I also have this problem - and not only with Office 365, however that's the most annoying.

It appears to have nothing to do with UNIX-level permissions; they are fine. The same documents can be opened with LibreOffice, but I need MS Office to work.

I have the same problem with some PDFs - "Sign PDF" (application from the App Store) cannot open them, but Adobe Reader can.

I gave the programs "Full Disk Access" (in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Full Disk Access) - no difference.

Note that rebooting does help - after a reboot, I can open all documents with MS Office normally for a while.

If anyone knows a better workaround without rebooting or if someone knows what the root cause is, it would be great to hear.

I suspect some new security-related changes to MacOS are causing this very annoying problem.

Same issue. Some applications (e.g. Word) cannot open Docs in Documents folder but can open them if they are copied e.g. to Downloads). Granted full disk access, no diff. Last error on console:

2019-12-12 21:12:35.737 Microsoft Word[15816:9232429] Stream 0x7fc3d204ee80 is sending an event before being opened

2019-12-12 21:12:35.737 Microsoft Word[15816:9232429] Stream 0x7fc3d204ee80 is sending an event before being opened

I am beating myself up for ever upgrading to Catalina.... this thing is a disaster.

I gave up and created a ~/Documents2 folder and moved everything there. I now simply do not use the ~/Documents folder at all

I've been having the same issue as well. Seems like I'm mostly down to not being able to open downloaded documents I save to the "Documents" folder

I have this problem with every file type in my Documents folder. It started when I migrated to a new iMac running 10.15.1. The files were originally transferred using Migration Assistant. I did not notice for a couple of days until I tried to access an older .pdf.

I followed the steps outlined above including the steps in the "Reset permissions" section on this page: Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder. That actually gave me access to my files for exactly one day. The following day the issue reappeared and I could no longer access the files. So I Reset Permissions again, and the same result happened, access for one day, and the following, no access.

I tested the files stored on a clone of my HD and found they were able to be opened. So I deleted my existing user, created a brand new one, and copied the files from the clone to the new user account. This let me access my files for the remainder of the day, but today - no access.

Here is a partial ls -l of my Documents folder

Last login: Mon Nov 25 16:02:27 on console
rc@Deep-Thought ~ % cd /Users/rc/Documents 
rc@Deep-Thought Documents % ls -l
total 1527544
-rw-r-----@   1 rc  staff     771324 Jun 25 18:21 25BrightestStars_Jittasaiyapan_1500.jpg
-rw-------@   1 rc  staff      79092 Aug 14  2018 ABSMarketing.pdf
drwx------   10 rc  staff        320 Oct 28  2018 Appartments
drwx------    7 rc  staff        224 Oct 23  2013 Arduino
drwx------    9 rc  staff        288 Oct 27 14:19 Beth
-rw-------@   1 rc  staff  766844640 Oct 20 10:36 Building an app.mp4
-rw-------@   1 rc  staff      95032 Dec  4  2017 CleanChoice.pdf

If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be glad to hear them.