Random students unable to save in any Office product

I have a strange issue that I have not been able to resolve and need to see if anyone else has experienced similar and managed to resolve it.

The situation is that random students on random machines throughout the school are unable to save, either locally, on the network or Onedrive through any Office 365 product installed on the local computer. Clicking on Save or Save as elicits no response from the program in question.

If the student starts Wordpad, Notepad, etc. they are able to copy in the data and save to any aforementioned location. Then same if they start a Office Online application - they can work and save per usual there or save a copy locally.

But if they use the locally installed Office product they are unable to access any networked area, Onedrive or local file.

If an afflicted student moves to another machine, then they are able to save and use the Office product as normal.

I have confirmed this issue for: Word 2013, Excel 2013 and Powerpoint 2013.

The environment: we are running Windows 8.1 with Office 365 (with shared application licensing). Students are using a Mandatory profile with full GPO from the domain controllers.

I originally had this issue intermittently last year on Office 2013 (with KMS) but thought it was resolved when we moved to Office 365. Unfortunately it has NOT gotten better, and in fact I think it has gotten worse.

Have run reinstalls, repairs, different Office versions, but the problem crops up time after time. Am wondering if it might be GPO related or something else.

Any suggestions on where to look to resolve this?

September 1st, 2015 4:22pm

It could be GPO related, infrastructure configuration related, or even network related... Have you tried to create a lab and reproduce the issue in there?
  • Proposed as answer by Gramelot 11 hours 7 minutes ago
  • Unproposed as answer by ABAdmin 2 hours 12 minutes ago
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September 1st, 2015 4:25pm

It could be GPO related, infrastructure configuration related, or even network related... Have you tried to create a lab and reproduce the issue in there?
  • Proposed as answer by Gramelot Tuesday, September 01, 2015 8:25 PM
  • Unproposed as answer by ABAdmin Wednesday, September 02, 2015 5:19 AM
September 1st, 2015 8:25pm

It could be GPO related, infrastructure configuration related, or even network related... Have you tried to create a lab and reproduce the issue in there?
  • Proposed as answer by Gramelot Tuesday, September 01, 2015 8:25 PM
  • Unproposed as answer by ABAdmin Wednesday, September 02, 2015 5:19 AM
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September 1st, 2015 8:25pm

Hi,

It can be a GPO issue, but it's hard to tell which one caused it.

We may collect the event logs after the crash, check if we can find useful information from it.

Press Win + R, type "eventvwr" in the Run window, press Enter. Expand Windows Logs -> Application, find the related entries.

You can send the logs to our email address for analysis:

ibsofc@microsoft.com

Note Please add the url of this thread in the message for easy tracking.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

September 1st, 2015 11:16pm

@Gramelot: I have tried to recreate the issue in a lab, with user accounts that have been effected without any luck. The problem with a random error...its random.

@Melon Chen: I have fetched the event logs from machines and gone through them, but they seem in order. GPOs applied to the machines match the GPOs on machines without errors.

Question: Can the ability to save be tied to access to the local temp cache that Office products require, for when coping pictures/etc.?

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September 2nd, 2015 2:34am

Question: Can the ability to save be tied to access to the local temp cache that Office products require, for when coping pictures/etc.?

When saving documents, it may need to access to the local temp cache, but I'm not sure if this is related.

You can have the affected users start Word as administrator, check whether the issue persists.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

September 2nd, 2015 2:47am

Will give this a try. Have not yet done it come to think of it, but under tests I know that this normally causes issues with the Shared Office activation forcing the "Activate Office" pop-up and account connection. Adding in the student's details sets Office at that level.

Will come back to you when I have tested.

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September 2nd, 2015 10:12am

And tested, and the results are not good.

By launching the Office application as admin, the 1) license gets revoked and needs to be reinitialised & 2) the user loses all connection to networked locations. Oh and the user still cannot save or open Office files.

September 3rd, 2015 7:57am

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