Have you ever opened a document from SharePoint in the desktop app, only to find it locked in read-only mode—even though it works fine in the browser? That’s exactly the problem I ran into recently, and it took a bit of digging to figure out why.

At first, everything seemed normal. The document wasn’t marked as read-only in SharePoint Online, and I could even rename it without any issues. But every time I opened it in Word via the desktop app, it was locked for editing. No matter what I did, the file remained stubbornly read-only.

The Culprit: Controlled Document Libraries & OneDrive Sync

After some troubleshooting, I realized that the document library was a controlled document library with an approval process enabled. This setting enforces restrictions on editing to maintain version control and compliance.

On top of that, the library was also synced to OneDrive, and here’s the catch: When a document library has approval controls in place, any files synced to OneDrive become read-only by default. Even though I was opening the file directly from SharePoint, because OneDrive was syncing the library, the desktop version of Word treated it as a read-only file.

The Fix: Disable OneDrive Sync

The solution turned out to be simple:

👉 Disable the sync for the document library in OneDrive.

Once I stopped OneDrive from syncing the library, I was able to open and edit the document in the desktop app without any issues.

Key Takeaways

• If a SharePoint document is unexpectedly read-only in the desktop app, but editable in the browser, check if the library requires approval.
• If the document library has approval controls, OneDrive will sync it as read-only, even for the file owner.
• Disabling OneDrive sync for that library allows you to edit documents normally in the desktop application.

If you’ve run into a similar issue, I hope this helps you avoid the same frustration. SharePoint and OneDrive can be incredibly powerful tools—but sometimes, their settings work against us in ways we don’t expect!