Microsoft Excel: The File couldn’t open in Protected View
If Microsoft Excel shows the “The file couldn’t open in protected view” error when you open your file, try the solutions described below: Let’s see all these fixes in detail.
1] Change the name of the file
Before you try any troubleshooting method, change the name of your file and then see if you get the same error message. This trick has worked for many users. Hence, it should also work for you. If this does not work, try the next potential fix.
2] Update Office
You can manually check for Office updates. Updating Microsoft Office can fix many bugs and issues. The following steps will help you check updates for Microsoft Office:
3] Unblock the file
If the issue persists, Unblock the file you are experiencing the issue with. To unblock the file, follow the steps below:
This should fix the issue.
3] Change the Trust Center settings
The error message says that Microsoft Excel cannot open the selected file in Protected View. Therefore, if you disable the Protected View in Trust Center settings, the error may get fixed. Go through the following steps to disable the Protected View mode in Microsoft Excel.
5] Check if the Dynamic Data Exchange option is enabled
By default, the DDE mode remains disabled in Excel. But if it is enabled, you may experience issues with excel, like problems launching Excel or Excel files. Check if this mode is enabled or not. If yes, disable it. The following instructions will guide you on this:
6] Repair Office
If the problem persists, some of your Office files might have been corrupted. In this case, repairing Microsoft Office can resolve the issue. First, try Quick Repair. If this does not work, run an Online Repair. This should fix the problem.
7] Uninstall and reinstall Office
If none of the above solutions worked, uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Office. Before you uninstall Office, make sure that you have the product key. The product key will be used to reactivate Microsoft Office. Read: Save button grayed out in Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
How do I stop The file couldn’t open in Protected View?
The error message says that the particular file cannot be opened in the Protected View. Therefore, the effective solution to resolve this error is to disable the protected View. Apart from that, you can also try changing the name of your file, as this trick has helped many users. We have explained the ways to fix this error in Excel in detail in this article.
How do I force an Excel file to open in Protected Mode?
You can open every Excel file in Protected Mode. For this, first, enable the Protected View in Excel Options. After that, configure the File Block Settings. The following steps will help you with that:
I hope the solutions explained in this post helped you fix the issue. Read next: How to fix Excel printing problems in Windows 11/10.
