Win10 1803 / Word & PP 2016 - Cannot switch between UNC and mapped drive when saving

[sonofsanta]

This is a frustratingly specific error that somehow end users are managing to find repeatedly, and is a right PITA when they do find it.

 

Just upgraded to Win 10 (1803) and Office 2016. If I open a Word document from a user's mapped drive (connected via the user object in AD), make a change, go to Save As then go to the UNC path (e.g. a redirected "Documents" under Quick Access), Word complains that

The file $file already exists. Do you want to:

• Replace existing file
  
• Save changes with a different name
  
• Merge changes into existing file
  

If I select the first option, it looks like it's saved--it doesn't offer any further complaint--but it hasn't saved. If you go to close Word straight away, it will prompt you with the usual unsaved changes, do you want to save warning; clicking Save gives you the whirling blue circle for a few moments then doesn't close Word. Clicking No closes Word, but the changes are lost. In summary: it's not saving.

 

If I select the second option above, different name, it just takes me back to the dialog so I can use a different filename. That does allow me to save, so it's not a permissiongs thing (it's the same folder via two different routes, it couldn't be!). If I select the third option, it complains that it couldn't merge. If I choose either 1 or 3 now, then go to Save As again, it then starts prompting in the usual Save As fashion (i.e. You already have a file named $file. Do you want to replace it with this one?) which is what I'd expect all along. But it still doesn't save!

 

It does this both ways: I can open from Documents and fail to save to the mapped drive, I can open from the mapped drive and fail to save to Documents. It does this even if I Run as Administrator. If I open from the UNC then go to save to a subfolder on the mapped drive where there's no existing copy, it saves fine.

 

PowerPoint behaves similarly, albeit with different dialog boxes. Excel, strangely, is fine. Still amazes me how fragmented Office is as a suite after all these decades.

 

Basically it seems like it's seeing the UNC path and the mapped path as two completely different paths, and acting as if two people have the file open, even though it's one file and one user. It's leading people to think their work is saved, but it's not, and thanks to Win10 deprecating roaming profiles we can't even go back and rescue from tmp files now we're on mandatory (AutoRecover files don't get kept as it's not crashing, it's being closed by the user). It's proving a right swine to Google, so I'm hoping someone here has hit something similar--nearly every Google search ends up back on EG anyway, after all

[sonofsanta]

Still working through this in a TechNet forum, but I am slightly staggered and irritated by the discovery thus far that disabling either Microsoft Windows Defender or Microsoft UE-V allows Microsoft Word to talk to Microsoft Outlook on Microsoft Windows. Is it so much to ask that the different parts of Microsoft just talk to each other?

[jmak]

I think I might be seeing this - you've given a far more detailed description than what I have, but there are bits that make me suspicious. I'll check next week and let you know.

[sonofsanta]

Just realised my second post isn't related to my first post but is the other issue I'm having with MS and discissing on TechNet. I'm having so much fun with Windows 10!

 

Anyway, if you're having the same problem @jmak this is the TechNet thread for that problem, not the stupid Share\Email problem https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Office2016ITPro/thread/a4f4c9e3-4c73-42b7-95f9-a737253f22e9/