I have a customer that has 4 network drives that are suddenly opening all documents and spreadsheets in Protected View. They were also complaining that as best as they could remember, the folders and files suddenly turned blue on them around the same time. Is there any relationship between file/folder compression and protected view? I've disabled compression on a few test folders, but protected view still comes up. I know how to disable it on their local workstations, but I'd prefer not to do this. They've not send and received any of these through email - strictly created them on site and view/edit them on site. Thanks

Hi baskervi,

Based on your description, my understanding is that your customer open the documents from network drives in Protected View mode. And you wonder to open documents without protecting view but not disable this mode.

I suggest you can add the path of network drives to trusted location.

1. Click File > Options.
2. Click Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Trusted Locations.
3. Click Add new location.
4. Click Browse to find the folder, select a folder, and then click OK.

You can refer to this article:

https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Add-remove-or-change-a-trusted-location-7ee1cdc2-483e-4cbb-bcb3-4e7c67147fb4

Note: Please make sure check Allow Trusted Locations on my network (not recommended), as shown in the following figure.

Hope its helpful.

Regards,

George Zhao
TechNet Community Support

Thanks for your response.

I know how to add trusted locations to the computers and how to push this out via group policy - the latter I'll have to do as it affects all users on the network for over a dozen shares. I'm trying to figure out how and why this happened all of a sudden. The users have been accessing these documents for years without being prompted, and all of a sudden, EVERY user is being prompted. It's a domain-wide issue. 

I downloaded the admx files for Office 2010 and 2013 products as nothing has been configured in the past. I am not sure how the trusted locations could have suddenly changed.

• Edited by baskervi 16 hours 42 minutes ago

Thanks for your response.

I know how to add trusted locations to the computers and how to push this out via group policy - the latter I'll have to do as it affects all users on the network for over a dozen shares. I'm trying to figure out how and why this happened all of a sudden. The users have been accessing these documents for years without being prompted, and all of a sudden, EVERY user is being prompted. It's a domain-wide issue. 

I downloaded the admx files for Office 2010 and 2013 products as nothing has been configured in the past. I am not sure how the trusted locations could have suddenly changed.

• Edited by baskervi Thursday, May 07, 2015 2:47 PM

Thanks for your response.

I know how to add trusted locations to the computers and how to push this out via group policy - the latter I'll have to do as it affects all users on the network for over a dozen shares. I'm trying to figure out how and why this happened all of a sudden. The users have been accessing these documents for years without being prompted, and all of a sudden, EVERY user is being prompted. It's a domain-wide issue. 

I downloaded the admx files for Office 2010 and 2013 products as nothing has been configured in the past. I am not sure how the trusted locations could have suddenly changed.

• Edited by baskervi Thursday, May 07, 2015 2:47 PM

Hi baskervi,

Please refer to this similar case, it seems this issue might be occurred by updates of April 15. Now we dont get any latest progress, we will inform you if we get any updates about this issue.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/d141313a-548e-412f-8d19-6fc4e08a30ef/proteced-view-this-file-originated-from-internet-location?forum=excel

Regards,

George Zhao
TechNet Community Support

Thanks for your time and the link. The article isn't definitive that the problem is with an update as a specific update that caused the problem was not provided, but since the timing of our issue coincides with the time from the article you referenced, I'm  going to presume this is the problem. Thanks again.