You Can't Make This Change Because The Selection Is Locked Word 2016

Word can be a little unruly sometimes, making inexplicable changes. Live with Word's shenanigans because because they don't know how to. Users sometimes don't make that distinction and can't understand why the changes are still happening after they. Correct Accidental Use Of Caps Lock Key.

“Need help editing specific parts of a Word 2016 document. I can edit most of the document but there are many parts that do not allow me to edit them. It shows me the following message: ‘This modification is not allowed, because the selection is locked.’ Any idea on how to unlock this?”Microsoft Word 2016 enables users to prevent others from editing selected parts of a document or the whole document. For instance, when you try to make some changes to a Word document, a prompt saying “ This modification is not allowed because the selection is locked.” appears at the bottom-left corner of the page. How can you unlock this selection?

In this tutorial, we are going to analyze the causes and provide solutions to you.There are about 4 possible causes to this problem:1.The document is marked as final.2.The document is protected.3.You are using a trial version of Office 2016.4.Office 2016 has not yet been activated.Based-on the causes, we share the top 5 effective tactics with you as below. Disable Protected ViewWhen you open a protected Word 2016 document, you are able to click “Enable editing” button and then get rid of the “Protected View” temporary. Nevertheless, this is just a palliative because you need to hit the button again in the next time. Below are the steps to disable “Protect View” permanently.Step 1. Click the “File” menu and then you will see the “Options” tab in the left side. Just hit it and continue the step.Step 2. In the pop-up window, tap on “Trust Center” and then click “Trust Center Settings”.

Select “OK” button and continue the process.Step 3. In the “Trust Center” screen, hit “Protected View” and then uncheck “Enable Protected View for files originating from the Internet”, “Enable Protected View for files located in potentially unsafe locations” and “Enable Protected View for Outlook attachments”.Step 4. In the end, click “OK” and reboot the document. Create New DocumentThe last but not least way, if you can't make this change because the selection is locked in Word 2016, try to import the document with locked table into a new, blank document, which should copy all of the content without any document protection included and paste it to another new document.

Then you can edit it at last. This is the easiest method in my mind.That’s it! Now you are able to unlock selection in Microsoft Office Word 2016 and continue to edit the document as usual! By the way, if you lose way to unlock encrypted Word document, SmartKey is your best helper. You can also read the related articles and leave a comment as below.

Good luck with using Office Word 2016! Thanks for your reading.

Updated May 22, 2017If you’re getting a message at the bottom of Word 2007, Word 2010, or other products in the Office suite whenever you try to change the document saying “ This modifications is not allowed because the selection is locked.“, this article should answer your question ‘why’ and tell you how to make your document editable again.There are four possible causes to this problem:. The document is marked as final. The document is protected. You are using a trial of Office 2007. Office 2007 has not yet been activated.We will go through each cause and resolution, below. Document is Marked as FinalYou will also be unable to paste into the document.

If you hover over the Paste button under the Home tab, you’ll get this error message: “This command is currently disabled. This command is not available because the document is marked as final.”The rest of that error message also points us in the right direction. Click on the Office button (the circle with the office logo on it in the top-left corner) and go down to the Prepare sub-menu. In this sub-menu, you’ll see an icon next to ‘Mark as Final’ highlighted in orange. This means that it is enabled and the document is “finalized.” It won’t allow any changes to the document. It would be best practice to mark your document as final before you send it off to others for professional evaluation.

This also makes the red (spelling) and green (grammar) squiggles under words go away as well as any marked changes throughout the document.Besides the ‘Mark as Final’ icon being highlighted in the Prepare sub-menu you will also notice a small version of the same icon at the bottom of Word 2007 in the status bar.In order to make changes, the document just needs to be “un-finalized.” Go back to the Office button - Prepare menu and click “Mark as Final” to toggle it off. After that, the icon will now appear unhighlighted and the icon will be gone from the status bar.Document is ProtectedIf you are still not able to edit the document, it may be protected.

Switch to the Review tab and then hit the Protect Document button to bring up a small menu.From that menu, choose Restrict Formatting and Editing. Next to the document, a little window should pop up.

If at the bottom, you have a Stop Protection button, click that. If you don’t see that button but instead see a ‘ Start protection‘ button, you can close this little window. This setting is not the one locking your document. You may have to enter a password in order to modify the document. You’ll need to know the password in order to stop this protection.Your trial of Office 2007 has expired.If you’re using Office 2007 that came with your computer, likely it was only a trial and has expired.

Try opening your document in the free or purchase a full version of Microsoft Office 2007. “If you have the Office Home and Student 2007 Trial preloaded on your computer, you can purchase the disc version and use the product-key to unlock and activate the preloaded trial.”From the Microsoft Office Help:Grace period Before you enter a valid Product Key, you can run the software 25 times, which is the grace period. During the grace period, certain features or programs might be enabled that are not included in the product you have purchased. After you enter a valid Product Key, you will see only the programs and features that you have purchased.Reduced Functionality mode After the grace period, if you have not entered a valid Product Key, the software goes into Reduced Functionality mode. In Reduced Functionality mode, your software behaves similarly to a viewer.

You cannot save modifications to documents or create new documents, and functionality might be reduced. No existing files or documents are harmed in Reduced Functionality mode. After you enter your Product Key and activate your software, you will have full functionality for the programs and features that you purchased. Office 2007 has not yet been activated.If you’re seeing the problem in both Word and Excel, the problem is obviously Office-wide.

Office 2007 may not have been activated.While you’re connected to the Internet, go to the Office button in the top-left corner and choose Word Options from the bottom of the menu.