FIX: Protected View error opening Office documents from Outlook

Quick Fix:

  • Go to Outlook
  • Click File tab, then Options and finally Advanced
  • Now scroll down to “Display” and check the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” option

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According to a post by “David at DRA” this is due to a graphics driver bug that has been introduced during a Win 10 update. So hopefully this is a temporary issue that will be resolved.  (See half way down this page http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2016-outlook/outlook-2016-attachments-will-not-open-in/ce844af4-1013-4e47-bd1c-573ae7124667?page=2)

More Detail:

Not sure of exact timing, but somewhere in the process of upgrading to Windows 10, Office 2016 and/or installing updates the ability to open Office documents directly from Outlook stopped working.

The errors related to “Protected View”, with the following error message.

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The vast majority of fixes suggesting having to save the file to disk and then right clicking properties and checking the “Unblock” field:

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However thanks to a post by David at DRA I found the fix outlined at the top.  This is not ideal and Microsoft hopefully have this on their list of “bugs to fix”. Until then this has stopped the pain.

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