What to do if you get the error “You can’t make this change because the selection is locked” in Word

What to do if you have the error “You can’t make this change because the selection is locked” in Word, it is the big headache for all users of this commonly used program, for carrying out document work, among others.

Despite all the updates that this type of program has, it often receives errors that harm the continuity of operational work on your computerand that is why below we will explain what you can do to solve this type of eventuality, which occurs in your Microsoft Word operating system.

Problems in Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is one of the most successful software that Microsoft has ever released, since Word, Excel and Powerpoint have become an essential part of daily life for those who use Windows on their computer, that is why office It is one of the cleanest and most reliable software in history.

However, he is not exempt from suffering errors such as the one he says “you can’t make this change because the selection is locked”, that can occur when you open a blank document in Microsoft Word 13, Word 16 or Office 365, and you cannot make any changes to the document.

When this error occurs, this occurs particularly in the previously mentioned versions of MiceMicroOfficeand when you try to make changes to the document, it tells you “this modification is not allowed because the selection is locked” or “this modification/change is not allowed because the document is open for viewing”, and appears in the lower left corner of the window.

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This message arises when a new way to view documents in word 2013 which prevented him from editing the document, which had been intended for better electronic reader type viewing. And the problem was caused by Word opening the document in the option “reading view”, being a type of read-only environment intended to keep the document in its original and intact state.

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What to do if you have the error “You can’t make this change because the selection is locked” in Word

In order to solve this type of error, the following methods can be performed:

First Solution

What you need to do is switch to the normal view of the “print layout”, that will help you edit the document, to do this follow these steps:

Click on the tab that says “See” on top.

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After this you click on the option “Edit document” found in the drop-down list menu.

You can also click on the view button where it says “print layout” in the lower right corner of the window, next to the control of the“.

Second Solution

Another way to solve this problem is for Word to stop trying to open the documents in view-only or later mode, and to prevent Word from always opening the documents in reading view, to do this, perform the following steps:

Click on the menu and look for the option “Archive”.

Then you click on the tab called “Options” in the drop-down menu list.

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After this in the header of the tab called “Startup options”you have to uncheck the box that says email attachments and other non-editable files in reading view”and you give the option of “Accept”.

Third Solution

This solution is achieved by disabling the restricted edition of Microsoft Office, completing the following steps.

You must click anywhere in the protected area.

Then you click on the panel, on the option “Restrict editing”, which will be displayed on the right side.

Then you have to select the button “Step protection”, to unlock the protected area of ​​the document.

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Fourth Solution

In this case where the Word document is marked as final and is not editable, you have to click on the button that says “Edit anyway”which is highlighted in the page header of the word fileas it is a one-time operation, you have to perform this step every time this error occurs.

Fifth Solution

In this case, if you are using the trial version of Office 2016 which is usually pre-installed on your computer, in order to unlock the selection in Word, you have to purchase a retail copy. Or if you have a licensed copy, the problem is that you have not yet activated it. To do this you have to follow these steps:

You have to select the tab that says “Archive” in the document.

Then you have to click on the option that says “Account”.

Then you have to write the product key, which is usually 25 characters long, to activate Office Word 2016.

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Sixth Solution

The other solution is to create a new document, with this method you can all the content without any document protection being included and paste it into another new document. Then you will be able to edit the content of this new document without any problem.

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As you could see the solutions to the error “You cannot make this change because the selection is locked”they are very simple, so we invite you to apply any of the methods presented in this article, and thus work in Word without any problem.

If you want to know other articles similar to What to do if you have the error “You can’t make this change because the selection is locked” in Word you can visit the category.

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