Disable Protected View In Office 2010

By Nakodari on Dec 25 2009 8 Comments

By default Office 2010 will open documents in protected mode that fail validation, have been downloaded from the internet, are located in potentially unsafe location and include attachments. Protected view opens the document in read-only mode thus minimizing the exposure to some potential security threat.

If you are an experienced user who is annoyed by the protected view, you can always disable it even though it is not recommended by Microsoft.

Open MS Word 2010, go to File Menu(Office Backstage) and select Options. Select Trust Center from the left sidebar and then click Trust Center Settings button in the main window. Now in Trust Center dialog window, select Protected View from the left sidebar and disable protected view for any desired option.

Office 2010 Protected View

You can disable Protected View for files that failed validation, that have been downloaded from the internet, are located in unsafe locations, and/or contain attachments.

When done, hit OK. The above example is that of Word 2010, you will have to manually uncheck the options from Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Outlook 2010, etc.

  • alejo

    Thanks for the solution, it works fine !!

  • James

    Thanks very much for the solution.

    This is another useless, medling feature by Microsoft which lends credibility to the generally held view that Microsoft is out of touch with consumers.

    Now, thanks to Microsoft’s annoying security feature, I have click extra buttons dozens of times each month just to be able to edit and print documents. Thanks for wasting my time. I will be moving to software created by other providers.

    • Jeremy

      AGREED!
      Thank You!

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  • Carol Bennett

    Did absolutely NOTHING!!!! I am now unable to edit my own documents I made out on an earlier version! I am sick of it! All it will let me do is open under protective mode! My own creations!
    I need help! Somebody at Microsoft needs to let us determine what files we want to open under protective view! I have wasted an entire day trying to edit a file I need now!
    Very disgruntled at Microsoft,
    Carol

  • BF

    Nope. Doesn’t work. Unchecked just about everything in the trust center, including the Protected View settings, and I still get the warning bar. And this one is for no apparent reason, since the file has lived in the same directory since birth. Pretty goofy, like much else in Win7…or Office 2010.

  • Dan

    1.goto http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=189316 and download the office template.
    2. extract the files, then save the proper files to c:\policydefinitions
    3. start your local group policy editor ( start – run – gpedit.msc)
    4. right click Administrative templates under computer configuration and select add/remove templates and you want to add the excel template that you just saved to the policydefinitons folder.
    5. while in local groupe policy editor, go to USER CONFIGURATION – Administrative templates- Classic Administrative templates – Microsoft Excel 2010 – Excel Options – Security – Trust Center – Here you will see Protected View and File block settings – go through the file block settings and enable everything with DO NOT BLOCK , you can also adjust the protected view options if you like.

    You should then stop receiving all the prompts/blocks
    6.

  • Tech Joe

    This artical is WRONG!

    The error occurs when you open a Microsoft Office file type blocked by File Block settings in the Trust Center. To enable this file type, do the following:

    1. In Word or Excel Click the FILE tab.
    2. Under HELP, Click Options.
    3. Click TRUST CENTER, and then click TRUST CENTER SETTINGS
    4. In the Trust Center, click FILE BLOCK SETTINGS
    5. On the bottom where it states, “Open behavior for selected file types:” select option 3, which is OPEN SELECTED FILE TYPES IN PROTECTED VIEW AND ALLOW EDITING
    6. Click OK and restart Word or Excel

    Now you do’t have to have your finger up your ars and say, “durr”

  • T Harris

    Thanks Tech Joe! Your solution worked great! I wish there was some way I could bump it to the top of the list!