We have both Project Server 2010 and SharePoint 2010 installations and in the last few days, have experienced problems out of the blue on a number of different comnputers where we can no longer open documents in Edit mode.

If we click on the document name link, the usual dialog box that allows you to choose whether you want to open in read only or Edit mode does not display and the only option is to Open or Save.  Open simply opens in Read only mode and we cannot save it back into the document library with the same name.

The alternative is to use the drop down menu (eg. Edit in Microsoft Word) but then the following error appears.

"The document could not be opened for editing. A Microsoft SharePoint Foundation compatible application could not be found to edit the document."

I have tried deleting my Internet Explorer history/cookies etc and then closed IE and re-opened and sometimes this seems to fix it but then the next time I try to edit the same document I get the same issue.  This has only started occurring recently and is happening in our Project Server environment as well as a separate SharePoint environment.

Any thoughts on what is causing this and how to fix would be greatly appreciated.

Peter

Hi Peter- there could be several reasons for this depending on what browser/version and what Office/version you're using. See the following links for several things to check:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/emeaoffice/archive/2013/04/29/you-get-an-error-message-when-you-open-an-office-file-from-sharepoint-on-a-computer-on-which-you-installed-more-than-one-version-of-office.aspx

https://dlairman.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/quick-fix-the-document-could-not-be-opened-for-editing-a-microsoft-sharepoint-foundation-compatible-application-could-not-be-found-to-edit-the-document/

http://eugeneboon.com/solved-the-document-could-not-be-opened-for-editing-a-microsoft-sharepoint-foundation-compatible-application-could-not-be-found-to-edit-the-document/

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/833714

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2823322

Thanks Cameron

I had seen a few of these links but not sure how useful they are to our situation, which is proving to be quite random.

Yesterday it seemed that the issue had resolved itself only to resume a little later in the day.  Then a really weird thing happened late yesterday.  When I'd click on a link to a document, instead of receiving any dialog pop up box, the file just opened....twice! I tried this a number of times and it kept doing the same thing.  Then, this morning, it seems to be working normally again.

I have referred it to our techo people (including the links you provided) to look into in case there is something else at play here.

I'll post again once I get a solution (hopefully).

Thanks again for your response.

Peter