microsoft office 2011 for mac is read only after documents were saved

Good Morning,

I downloaded microsoft office 2011 to my Mac Mini. I have created several word documents, and upon saving them, I now cannot close the documents nor were they actually save. I then attempted to modify the documents and now see that they have been saved in a read only format, can someone tell me what I need to do to correct this. Also, is there another free word processing application that I can use that will allow microsoft word users to view and manipulate the data in my documents. Also, I will need to be able to update word documents. Lastly, my OS is 10.10.1.

Thanks,

Chris