Have you wondered like 100 million other users what the heck this is?
It’s a grotesque and useless thing called “Protected View”. And until today, nobody knows why Microsoft has introduced this nonsense.
Basically, when you open documents, an ugly yellow dialog box pops up on the top of your Excel or Word document telling you to “Enable Editing” of your document, if you want to be able to edit it. Of course it makes absolutely no sense to ask such a question. Of course I want to edit it you morons. Why would I open it, then?
Anyways, now that is out of the way, let’s see how we can disable this crap.
Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to find it, so you have to go through a couple of steps:
- Go to your menu “File”
- Click “Options”
- Click “Trust Center”
- Click “Trust Center Settings…”
- Click “Protected View”
- Disable all check boxes
If you hate Microsoft as much as I do, please leave your insults below in the comment section.
Thank you.
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thank you
this is so annoying
Thank you for calling out this idiocy.
me too I hate Microsoft, you can’t measure it
Thank you for this information. MICROSOFT: There should be an option for admins to delete this crap when installing Office 365.
Thx
Microsoft is a crap-o-la company, with their idiotic ideas, they should try to make things easier instead of harder.
Thank you!
You sir are a godsend, every damn file accessed through our vpn needed this
The friggin program opens my excel spreadsheet in protected mode. When I go to the settings as shown in the instructions above, NONE OF THE FRIGGIN BOXES ARE EVEN CHECKED.
I hate it too. I used to like Word Perfect
So glad to see that more people agree that Microsoft is a literal cancerous virus on software and technology. what a f**king stupid feature. I can’t fathom the stupidity of a brain capable of deriving such a moronic feature in Microsoft products. This company has become a plague.
Hey, Microsoft! P*SS THE F*CK OFF OF MY COMPUTER ALREADY.
I don’t have the expertise or computer savvy to know exactly what is worthless or useful as far as Microsoft programming goes, but it’s a joy to be able to disable this feature, and I appreciate all this good ire! Thanks gang!
Unlike the author and other comments, I side with Microsoft on this. Sure, it isn’t convenient, but security and convenience are often conflicting. The author did not bother to read the Microsoft page on why they even have this feature. These features are meant to protect the careless or uninformed user, that’s why the default is feature turned ON. More informed users don;t need it, and that’s why there’s a setting to turn it OFF. Get over your silly frustration, people.
Microsoft help page on Protected View:
support.office.com/en-us/article/what-is-protected-view-d6f09ac7-e6b9-4495-8e43-2bbcdbcb6653
I don’t know if this is a result of an update or what… I didn’t used to mind the protected view because I could easily click on enable editing. However, that button is gone! I spent over an hour trying to find out how to get out of protected view (an hour that I don’t have stupid microsoft… I don’t use you to waste my time). Thank you very much for telling me how I could disable that feature. Every other site I went to told me to click on enable editing… yes, that was quite obvious when it was there. Thanks again… I’m going to go scream microsoft expletives now.
I wouldn’t even mind this “feature” that much, but what is MOST fucking awful about it is that it DOES let you rearrange your window or zoom/pan within the document…BUT this is erased when you enable editing, and your window will zip back to the state it was when it first opened. Because when I open a document the first thing I do, before really examining it, is fitting it on my screen where I want it. SO GOD THAT IS FUCKING IRRITATING. I confess i truly hate microsoft, because they act as if they never actually use their own products.
I want and need “Protected View” for files that I download from the Internet. What Microsoft needs is not “Enable Editing”, but “Remove all Macros”.
I had the exact same reaction you had. This is an answer to a problem NOBODY had.
Typical Microsoft idiotic, incompetent thinking. I am a power Excel user and NEVER EVER had the need to open a spread in protected view and I ALWAYS wanted to edit anything I opened…dah!
Absolutely mind-numbingly stupid feature that all it does is contribute to code bloat in Microsoftt’s office suite. I can think of other useful things that Excel could do….
I didn’t think anyone could hate Microsoft as much as I do. So refreshing to read that someone else does!!! Thank you for all your help with their pathetic new barely operating system Windoze 10.