All of my Libre Office documents & spreadsheets are locked for editing

[mauimermaid]

Yesterday my Avast anti-virus program warned me if I wanted to allow {some program/adware/malware} to allow access to my documents, I responded “NO” and am concerned a registry key was changed. (I should have taken a screen capture of the message but unfortunately I did not). As a result, all of my documents and spreadsheets are now ‘locked for editing by UNKNOWN user’. All I can do now is open a ‘copy’, make edits, and save it with a new filename and then it also becomes locked for editing.

Can anyone help?

[EarnestAl]

It was probably asking if soffice.bin should be allowed access. That file is what LibreOffice uses to interact with the file system rather than the executables like swriter.exe, etc. By blocking file access to it in AVG, you have prevented LibreOffice from accessing files to save edited documents.

These steps are from AVG Free but are likely to be similar to the paid-for suite, also should work for Avast (substitute AVG for Avast).

Open AVG. Click Menu > Settings > Blocked and Allowed Apps then click on the button +Allow App, a new dialog will appear

Click the button Select app path. A dialog box to navigate to the app you want to add will appear. We need to add soffice.bin which won’t appear as an app, so assuming you have a standard 64 bit install the path is "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.bin", otherwise navigate to the installation folder and start writing in soffice.bin and the file should appear as a choice. Click Open

Cheers, Al

[mauimermaid]

OMG, you are a true genious! Issues fixed! Thank you so much!!!

[mauimermaid]

AL,
OMG, you are a true genious! Issues fixed! Thank you so much!!!

[EarnestAl]

While I appreciate your response, it isn’t an answer. Please click the grey tick tick next to my answer to show others the answer has been accepted. Cheers, Al