[ms office - 2016] Cannot save any office application on laptop

[Setro]

Hi All,

 

One of my users has borrowed a school laptop so they can work from home during this crisis. They are able to sign into their account/profile as they logged into it before taking off site. When they open a new Word document or try to save a document they get a "Network Error, Windows cannot access \\servername\Staff Desktop.", they hit save and nothing happens.

 

I did have Microsoft take a look at it, all they did was make me uninstall and reinstall it, tried resetting the licence and logging in with a different Office 365 account.

 

The office application works fine again when the laptop is brought back on site.

 

Kind regards,

 

S

[mavhc]

How is the laptop set up? Offline files? Where's their home drive? Looks like you have a redirected staff desktop so they'd never be able to save to that anyway. Are you expecting them to save in c:\users\username\documents?

[Setro]

Hi Mavhc,

 

Thanks for the quick response. I did not turn on offline files this is something I will try, is this something I can enable while they are on their home network or does it need to be on the schools?

 

Not certain where the home file is without look at it, I can ask for the laptop back to see where it is. How would I identify the Home Drive path?

 

Yes I thought it would be straight forward like save in c:\users\username\documents.

 

Thanks,

 

S

[LeMarchand]

I think the problem is that they're trying to save somewhere they don't have access to (the redirected desktop @mavhc mentioned). Can't they just save in their Documents folder? If you're using O365 they should also have a generous OneDrive allowance.

 

You should be able to see the Home Drive Path in AD.

 

Blummin' teachers and their saving everything on the desktop malarkey.

[Setro]

Hi LeMarchand,

 

I did make them a temporary Admin and tried saving to their Document folder, made no difference I don't think I've tried saving it to their OneDrive through the application, I will give a try to tomorrow once I have their laptop.

 

Thanks,

 

S

[LeMarchand]

Hi LeMarchand,

 

I did make them a temporary Admin and tried saving to their Document folder, made no difference I don't think I've tried saving it to their OneDrive through the application, I will give a try to tomorrow once I have their laptop.

 

Thanks,

 

S

 

When you get the laptop in, try to see where the link to "My Documents" leads. Maybe it's a network drive and offline files isn't activated, or you have some weird restrictions? (Unlikely if it's deployed in some way, as everyone should have the same problem, but you never know).

[mavhc]

You'd need to have the laptop on the LAN, enable offline files, make sure it's synced. Then I turn off the wifi to simulate it being offline and test they can access and save their files before they leave.

 

There's 2 things to check, what's their home drive set to in AD, that'll be in their user properties. And 2. has My Documents been redirected to their home drive/elsewhere? That's a local config, or a GPO setting