WD2000: Error Message: This File Is in Use by Another Application or User (224037)

ERROR MESSAGE

When you try to save a Word document, the following error message appears:

This file is in use by another application or user.

NOTE: Microsoft Office 2000 has built-in functionality that allows you to get more information about difficult-to-troubleshoot alerts or error messages. If you want to enable this functionality for this and other error messages in Microsoft Office 2000, please download the Microsoft Office 2000 Customizable Alerts file from the Microsoft Office Update Web site at the following address:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8FBEE1D3-C5BB-4A36-A2F7-DC63DE2A818C

NOTE: If you reached this article by clicking the Web Info button in an error message, you already have Customizable Alerts enabled.

THINGS TO TRY

The owner file for the document was not closed.

If the document is not shut down correctly (for example, Word quits unexpectedly), the owner file is not closed. As a result, the owner file remains and when you attempt to open the file again, you get the error message listed in the "Error Message" section of this article.

To correct this problem, delete the remaining temporary files. To do this, follow these steps:

IMPORTANT NOTE: If the document is located in a network or shared folder, make sure no one has any documents open before proceeding with the following procedure.

Quit Microsoft Word and all other applications.
On the Windows Start menu, do one of the following:
- In Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) or
  Windows 2000, point to Search and click For Files or Folders.
  
  -or-
- In Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT 4.0, point to Find and click Files or Folders.
Do one of the following:
- In the Search Results dialog box, type ~*.* in the Search for files or folders named box. Change the Look in box to the folder containing your Word document and then click Search Now.
  
  -or-
- In the Find dialog box, type ~*.* in the Named box. Change the Look in box to the folder containing your Word document and then click Find Now.
On the Edit menu, click Select All.
On the File menu, click Delete.

Another user has the document open for editing.

When a Word document is opened, an "owner" file is created. If the file is opened a second time by a different person or in a different version of Word, a message appears that states that the file is in use.

This problem is most likely to occur when you open documents from a network or shared folder location.

To work around this problem, do one of the following:

Click Cancel and wait for the document to become available.

-or-
Click Read Only and open the document as a copy. When you save your changes to the copy of the document, type a different file name in the Save As dialog box, and then click Save.

NOTE: Using this method creates two separate and different copies of the Word document.