Microsoft excel doesn't have permission to save.

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pepper2001m Author

Level 1

13 points

Microsoft excel doesn't have permission to save.

I've been having a little trouble saving files with Microsoft excel lately. No matter which folder I try saving to, I get the "you don't have permission to save in this file" error. However, the interesting thing is that this only occurs with Excel. Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, etc are all able to save fine and under the "get info" tab of the file, I do indeed have permissions to save.

Any thoughts on how to fix this? I've tried resetting user permissions with Terminal, resetting the computer, removing and re-granting permissions and nothing has worked.

Thanks!

Edit: I have discovered that I can edit and save existing Excel files with no problem but if I start a new book and try to save that, I hit the no permission error.

MacBook Pro, 2016 Model

Posted on Oct 2, 2017 8:39 AM

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Answer 1

dwb

Level 7

33,430 points

Oct 2, 2017 9:39 AM in response to pepper2001m

Are your Office programs up to date? Check that out---I think under the Help menu you'll find Check for updates.

Have you recently run Disk Utility and used Disk First Aid to repair your drive?

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Answer 2

pepper2001m Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 2, 2017 10:50 AM in response to dwb

Yep Office is all up to date. And no, I have not used Disk Utility/Disk First Aid. On another note, I saved the file under a different name, this time without "/" in the name. I'll see if this solves it in the long run.

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Answer 3

Oct 2, 2017 11:25 AM in response to pepper2001m

It's never a good idea to use "/" in a file name, as that is the path delimiter normally. Finder allows it (OS X terminal will not), but it's not recommended as it can create problems.

Finder allows "/' while the file system itself does not. Similarly, the file system allows colons, while Finder does not. It has to do with Finder maintaining legacy backwards compatibility (pre-OS X, the Mac file system used colon as the path delimiter).

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Answer 4

dwb

Level 7

33,430 points

Oct 2, 2017 11:15 AM in response to pepper2001m

ah ha! The backslash is one of the illegal characters for OS X filenames. Colon I believe is the other.

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