A5 problem

[AndroidNewby]

Posting blind here. Don't have a Samsung and posting for a friend.
She has a Samsung Galaxy A5 and claims that it is not possible to delete any downloaded file. She says they all seem to be read only.
Consequently, whenever I send her a file, she doesn't look at it on her phone, but instead logs in to her laptop, because, after she's read the file, she wants to delete it.
Does this seem correct? If so, is there some option she can alter to allow her to delete files on her phone?
I can't help; I have a Motorola phone which works as one would expect.
Thanks
AndroidNewbie

 

[B. Diddy]

How are you sending her the files? Are you talking about a messaging app or email? What app is she using to receive the file?

(It'd probably be more effective if we could communicate with your friend directly.)

 

[AndroidNewby]

It'd probably be more effective if we could communicate with your friend directly

Agreed - but she's not IT literate.
She claims that anything that is downloaded can't be deleted.
So, I send her a cartoon from a daily paper; this is a link via email, which she clicks on and the cartoon downloads. This, she claims, cannot be deleted.
If it wasn't for this ***** COVID stuff, I'd have a look myself, but she won't allow me to touch her phone.
Thanks for thinking about this; if it's all too vague, we'll drop the question.
Thanks
AndroidNewby

Right : The above comment is obviously garbage, since a link to a web page does not download anything. I have now established that the problem is with Word attachments to email. She double clicks on the attachment and the document opens. (She no longer has the emails.) Now, when she opens the Word app, it lists these documents, but when she tries to delete them, she gets an error "You do not have permission to delete this file. It is read only". She says she does not save the attachment when she opens it, so something in the phone OS must save it somewhere. Where might that be? The files are not in the Downloads folder - and why might they be read only? If they are truly read only, can they be deleted somehow?
Thanks
AndroidNewby

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't use Word, but it's probably something similar to Google Docs, where if you share a document with someone, you're giving them permission to read your document. However, it's still your document saved to your cloud, so the person you shared it with doesn't have permission to delete it from your account. She doesn't have the actual file locally saved anywhere (or if it is, it's just cached by the app) -- but her Word app would show that document in her history.

Try downloading any image file from the web to your phone (so that the image file is in your /Download directory), then share that image with her using either email or text. Ask her to download the image to her phone, then see if she can delete it. (You could use one of your photos as well, but I hesitated to give that suggestion because if you were to share a photo through Google Photos, the same thing would happen as mentioned above.)

 

[Laura Knotek]

How are you sharing the file? Is it a link to your OneDrive? Is that file "read only"?

Does my screenshot look like what you are using to share the file?

 

[AndroidNewby]

Problem Solved.
Thanks, everyone, for the help.
Following your postings, I got her to clear the cache and data for Word, and her problem disappeared.
She sends her grateful thanks.
Mine also.
AndroidNewby