Losing NTFS File Permissions

Question

We have one file that is causing us some problems with permissions on our file share server. The user is running Windows 10 1909 and Office 2016. When goes to save a particular Excel spreadsheet, it makes her the owner, and erases all permissions the file may have, even though inheritance is still enabled.

The only permissions she has on the file itself under normal circumstances are as follows:

Traverse folder / execute file
List Folder / read data
Read attributes
Read extended attributes
Create files /write data
Create folders /append data
Write attributes
Write extended attributes
Delete subfolders and files
Read permissions

She does NOT have permission to change permissions or take ownership, and yet that is exactly what happens every time she makes changes to the file and saves it. I've even checked her effect access to make sure there are not any weird conflicts, and the permissions are exactly as the should be.

Update (3/4/21): We are seeing this more and more, and so far, it has only affected Excel spreadsheets. That appears to be the only common factor. We are using on-prem Office as well, with a mixture of 2013, 2016, and 2019. But there appears to be no pattern other than it only affects excel spreadsheets.... so far.

The only workaround I have found is to just have the end-user completely rebuild their excel spreadsheet from scratching, saving it directly to the network share. I will fix the permissions on the bad file so they can copy data, and then rename the old file. Otherwise, no fix has been found since this was first reported in September

Answer 1

Hello guys, I was struggling with this problem too and I found a solution. My environment is:

• I have a Windows 2019 with a shared folder.
• In “Server Manager\File and Storage Services\Shares”, I shared a path like “server_name\folder_path”.
• But in my GPO, I defined the map as “domain_name\folder_path”.
  That was the problem! The fact of having used domain_name instead of server_name (as I had defined in the share” was causing the problem.
  I found this out during hours of tests, I typed manually the files folder using the hostname, and after saving the file, the permissions didn’t change. But when I used the domain_name and saved the file, the permissions changed.
  Sounds crazy I know but try it yourself and you’ll see! LOL
  Good luck!

Answer 2

@Bruno Queiroz Ribeiro da Silva I will have to look further into this. After two months this issue has appeared again over the last couple days. I will let you know.

Answer 3

Hello,
Indeed, I've been working on Excel files that have lost their NTFS permissions for the last two days, and I saw your comments last night. The phenomenon has reappeared! What's the problem? We can't put this problem anymore on a lack of update...I can smell the bug...

Answer 4

We continue to see this happen to individual users. We resolved it by closing down all office products and then reinstall Office 365 from the portal. The permission are only missing from Word & Excel files. I re-apply permissions on the impacted files and the installation of office fixes all future issues. We are a large organization and see this happen a few times. Almost like a Windows/Office update breaks the NTFS permissions for Office files.

Answer 5

We are experiencing the same issues. At the moment it is concerning only a few Excel files in a certain file share, but I'd like to be prepared if this is happening more often.
Is there a solution or anything we can do to mitigate this? I don't want to reinstall Office 365 on all our clients, there msut be a better way...