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My wife is using word from the lastest Microsoft 365 software version on a Windows 10 machine.
For a few months, she has only been able to open a subset of word files. For any others, Word would show the following error message:
Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions:
- Check the file permissions for the document or drive
- Make sure there is sufficient free memory or disk space
- Open the file with the TextRecovery converter
After some debugging, I was able to find out that the affected files can be made to open when you open the file's properties in Exporer and "unblock" the security.
Also, when adding directories to the "Trusted Locations" in Trust Center settings, files in those directories can be opened.
The three checkboxes in "Protected View" in the Trust Center settings are activated.
My wife can work like tihs, "unblocking" any files that have been downloaded, for example, but it's not an ideal situation.
If I'm not completely mistaken, the error message "Word experienced an error..." is popping up in a situation where the file should be opened, but in "protected view".
So I wonder if there is something that made it so "protected view" doesn't work anymore. Is there a setting I missed, or can something be done to fix this installation of Word?
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My wife can work like tihs, "unblocking" any files that have been downloaded, for example, but it's not an ideal situation.
It seems that the documents need to be "unblocked" are from internet.
Do these documents contain macro codes?
Microsoft has been increasing security levels to protect your computer, files from these potentially unsafe locations such as Internet may not be opened properly.
In particular, files that contain macro code. To help make Office more secure, Microsoft has changed the default behavior of Office applications to block macros in files from the Internet.
Like the steps mentioned in "Macros from the internet are blocked by default in Office", to allow macros in these files to run, you need to unlock these files individually, or put these files into a specific folder directory and add this directory as a trusted location for Office.
If users are accessing a network share by using its IP address, add the file share in the Trusted sites or the Local intranet zone.
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