Originally Posted by tarquinious

This can be caused by several things. A couple I can think of off-hand to check out a
1. Word (and other MS Office apps, but mainly Word) create temporary files when you open a document. These files are used for various things, one of them being controlling if somebody already has the document open, and appear in the same directory as the original document and always start with a ~ character. Word is notoriously bad at cleaning these up. When you have all of your documents closed, do a search for files beginning with a ~ and delete them all.
2. Where you are saving the files may be marked as Read-Only, and therefore assigning this attribute to your documents. To check this, in Explorer right-click on the folder you are saving into, and select Properties. On the General tab, under Attributes, the Read Only checkbox should be un-ticked.