Tip: Opening Downloaded Files In Microsoft Office 2010

If you have been bitten by the problem of trying to open a file you have downloaded from the Internet, opened as an email attachment, or received from a friends computer, using Microsoft Office 2010 – chances are you have been met by the new sandbox Protected View options in Office.

In earlier versions of Office, suspect files upon opening usually asked something like “This file could be unsafe – do you wan to open it anyway?” – which pretty much divided people into two primary groups – those who refused to open anything in case there was a security risk and those who opened everything because they wanted the content and had no idea how to tell is something was really safe or not. The message, whilst informative, was about as much use as a bouncer on a night-club door telling customers “There may or may not be trouble tonight – do you want to go in anyway?”

In this article we will look at two areas of file security and safety in Microsoft Office 2010, Protected View and Blocked file types.

At least now we have Protected View, which allows you to open downloaded files for read-only so they can’t do any harm and you can at least get an idea of what it’s all about it. Upon opening a file that has been downloaded from the Internet you will see a yellow bar stating “Protected View. This file originated from an Internet location and might be unsafe. Click for more details.” with a button to Enable Editing – much of the document contents will still be viewable. The ribbon bar and other features associated with editing a file will be removed during Protected View.

Clicking on “Enable Editing” closes the file and re-opens it outside of the sandboxed area – which allows editing as normal. If you click on the link indicated you will be taken to backstage view where you might be able to glean more information about the file before making any decisions about it.

 

Clicking the option “Protected View Settings” will take you into the Trust Center for handling future files. In the Trust Center you can configure a few global settings:

• Enable Protected View for files that fail validation – Office scans the file upon opening for known troublesome sequences of characters
• Enable Protected View for files originating from the Internet
• Enable Protected View for files located in potentially unsafe locations – a potential unsafe location may be your Temporary Internet Files folder
• Enable Protected View for Outlook attachments
• Enable Data Execution Prevention mode – to ensure programs cannot be run from memory areas designated for data only

Another area where you might be caught out, especially when dealing with files downloaded from the Internet or from another computer, is Blocked files in Microsoft Office.

You can quickly check if a file is blocked by right clicking on it in Windows Explorer and selecting Properties.

Ensure you have the General tab of Properties selected then look towards the bottom of the panel for the Security area.

If the Security area reads “This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer.” you will need to click the Unblock button before you are allowed to do anything with it.

The behaviour of Office 2010 for dealing with blocked file types can be configured in the Trust Center, accessed by going into File, Options, Trust Center, Trust Center Settings then choosing File Block Settings.

In File Block Settings you will be able to specify whether Office blocks opening or saving files based on a number of criteria including RTF files, earlier Word versions, Document Templates, and Web Pages. You can also tell Office whether to open blocked file types in Protected View, Disable opening of blocked files types, or simply allow all files to be opened for editing regardless of the risk.

In this article, “Tip: Opening Downloaded Files In Microsoft Office 2010”, we have looked at two important areas of file security and safety in Microsoft Office 2010 and what actions you can take to deal with them.