Unable to change publishing settings as admin

Question

This is Sitecore 8.2 initial release. Im logged in as Admin, same result on items that has workflows or not.

I can't set publish restrictions as show in image. The warning shows and the version handling isn't working. Why can't I modify the item?

Sitecore displays a warning: You cannot change publish restrictions as you cannot modify the item.

On the affected item there are two visible warnings:

1. You must lock this item before you can edit it
2. This item is controlled by Unicorn

If I lock the item it just creates a new version of it.

Answer 1

This might happen if the item is protected. You can verify this by clicking on an item in the content editor. You will see an information about item being protected.

If you are an admin you can unprotect the item and then be able to modify publish settings.

Further reading: http://contenttree.blogspot.com/2008/02/hiding-and-protecting-items.html

Answer 2

While Szymon's answer could be the cause, another possibility is that the item is actually locked by someone else.

Answer 3

It seems like this item is configured to sync with Unicorn. When that is set, when you try to edit an item, Unicorn will try to write the into file system location.

Please check your set the Unicorn file path correctly and your app pool user has write permission to Unicorn folder location.