Is there some way to force Office to remove the read only status of an open document?
I frequently have documents open that are stored on the network. I also need to move my laptop around and sometimes I end up in a place where there is no network access. When that happens all my open documents get converted to Read Only. Eventually I reconnect to the network but when I try to save the documents, my only option is to save with a different file name.
I can only guess why Microsoft did this: Maybe someone else modified the document while I was offline? I don't care! I just want to save it.

Perhaps you should discuss the matter with your network administrator - it may be a network configuration issue as much as anything; it's not something Office, per se, can do anything about. In any event, you could probably re-save the file with the same name, etc., via SaveAs.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Why would you say Office can't do anything about?
Let me splain again more slowly:
I open a Word document on a network drive.
I hibernate laptop
Wake laptop in a location with no access to corporate network
Word changes my document to "Read Only" (Says Read Only right on the top of the window)
I edit the document and return to the corporate network.
Word still says the document is read only. There is nothing on the network making the file read only, Word just refuses to write to the original location of the file. Once Word marks a file in memory as read only, there's no way to change it. In the past I would get a warning: "file exists, are you sure?" and I could decide yes or no.

Yes, I can save as a different file name but this is silly. I end up with a dozen versions. It's like Word is working in the 20th century where everyone uses a desktop PC connected to a wired network. Am I really the only one who is annoyed by this?

Because the situation is under the control of you network software, not Word. Plain and simple.

Quite obviously, if you take the laptop to "a location with no access to corporate network", it can't be saved via an ordinary Save. In that sense it's 'read-only' and any save while not connected would have to be done via Save As. Now, how do you suppose your network would know it's the same file when you later reconnect to your network and not another with the same name (regardless of whether you've edited and/or saved in the meantime)? It appears your network guards against accidental overwriting by maintaining the 'Save As' requirement. If saving with a different name is happening, that too is because of the way your network works. A smarter network might store a token on the laptop to enable it to confirm whether the file you have open is the same one that was open when the connection was lost, but that's apparently not how your network works.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]