Close all applications that are currently opened.

If this scenario is applicable to your particular scenario, here’s what you need to do: After doing this and restarting their Mac, most affected users have reported that the Grant access error has stopped occurring. Some affected users that have been encountering this issue with macOS 10.13 High Sierra or above have reported that the issue has been resolved after they cleaned the font caches by using the Terminal.

Clearing the Mac OS Font Caches via Terminal.

As of now, FontBook is the only font management utility that is specifically designed to work with Apple’s new security system. It has been confirmed that 3rd party font management apps like Suitcase, Linotype Font Explorer, Extense, or FontExplorer X are the main culprits causing the Grant Access error with the Office 2016 suite. However, most 3rd party font utilities have not been fully updated to work with the new sandbox rules and will cause conflicts seen as security violations by MacOS. Microsoft provides a set of fonts specifically for their software, which will get installed in a different location.

Starting with Office 2016, Microsoft had to comply with Apple’s rules in order to be able to sell the Office suite in the App store. In the event that a system-wide font gets altered along the way, it will be regarded as a security violation and will be replaced at the next update. Apple no longer allows an application to install fonts for system-wide use. Following the new guidelines, every application that uses custom fonts must ensure that the fonts stay exclusive to that particular application. Application sandboxing is very effective in preventing viruses or other malware from affecting OS files. Apple now uses sandboxing to limit various actions by tying them to a specific location. The Grant Acess error is caused by the updated Apple sandboxing rules. The issue typically appears when trying to open Word files, but some users have also reported the issue with Excel and Powerpoint files.

A lot of MacOS users are receiving the Grant File Access error when trying to open various file types in Office 2016.

When a student tries to open a Word document from Blackboard, they receive 'access permission' error.

Issues with microsoft word on mac