OSX 10.14 Mojave SMB locking files and not releasing them

I have a Windows server with a file share accessed by a few Macs running 10.13 High Sierra and 10.14 Mojave. The Mojave Macs keep locking out every file they access on the SMB file share. So, the Mac user who opened the file can't save to the file (with a warning about the file being open and in use), nor can anyone else access the file (until the connection is force closed on the server side).

On High Sierra Macs, file handling over SMB appears to be normal with no lockout issues.

Because this is become such a chronic issue, I'm considering restoring the Mojave macs back to High Sierra. But before I do that, are there any other options that might address this issue?

Note that SMBv1 is disabled for security reasons, and is not a fallback option.


I have this same issue. It seems to only be with Microsoft Office files. PDFs don't seem to have "permanent lock" issue. I don't know if it's a problem with the MacOS "dual fork" file structure fighting with the Microsoft temporary lock file.

I've re-pushed NTFS permissions down from the parent folder to see if that would resolve the creation/destruction of the temporary files. It works for a bit then the problem comes right back.

We have even had one file where all permissions were removed and even the SYSTEM user was unable to recover the permissions. I couldn't seize ownership with the GUI or any cmd commands. I had to restore the file from a backup.

Have you had any luck with this issue?

I've tested the glitch with a laptop that is running the same versions of MacOS and Office but have been unable to trigger the lock file issue.


We've faced this at my work as well, we noticed that Mojave machines would complain about "Write Access" not being granted, we went through using Full Control/Modify on our user's folder and it didn't resolve it.

We tried turning off thumbnails in Finder which also didn't do much in the way of it working, then finally we ran Handle which showed us when we were having the issue that there were 3 open handles to the file in question, when we closed Photoshop or whatever program all but 1 would be released, further digging just showed us that it was SYSTEM that had the file open so that didn't give us much to go off.

I've been watching the Apple Change Logs to see if they make any mention of SMB problems being fixed, but it seems like it's not moving forward. I'm sorry for not bringing a helpful answer but it hasn't fully fallen off our radar as we're wanting to go to Mojave as soon as we find something to fix this annoying issue.