Office documents may error when opened after a Windows 10 upgrade

If you have upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10, you may find that some of your Office 2013 documents result in errors when you try to open them in protected view using a Click-to-Run install of Office. Protected View can occur when opening files from locations that may pose a threat such as Outlook or the internet.

Errors:

  • Excel: "This file is corrupt and cannot be opened"
  • Word: "Word experienced an error trying to open the file"
  • PowerPoint: "Sorry, PowerPoint can't read <file name>"

For more on Protected View, refer to https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-Protected-View-d6f09ac7-e6b9-4495-8e43-2bbcdbcb6653?CTT=1&CorrelationId=e345befc-508c-4b7d-9e6e-1ca7115fed91&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

 

This issue is being investigated. The KB article below includes steps to resolve the issue:

Error opening Office documents after upgrading to Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086786

 

Important Notes:

You may have seen forum posts or third-party content that recommend disabling or bypassing Protected View to prevent this issue. We strongly discourage this step as a resolution.

This issue has not occurred with MSI Office installs or with upgrades from Windows 8.1.

Additionally, if your files are blocked but you are getting a Windows Security type of message, check out this blog as a possibility:

Blocked Access to files with Windows 10
https://blogs.technet.com/b/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/archive/2015/08/19/blocked-access-to-files-with-windows-10.aspx

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2015
    The resolution steps worked for me!!!!! This problem was so frustrating. Thank you.
  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2015
    I am not able to open word document receives as an attachments to gmail after the windows 10 upgrade.
  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2015
    I have a similar problem after updating from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. My excel files open as read only files and says I need administrative access to change. Well, I am the only person using this PC and I am set up as the administrator. Nothing I have tried so far works.
  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2015
    Thank you very much
  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2015
    Unblocking the file in file properties as described in the linked webpage worked for me and I could open the downloaded word file received as an email attachment. Thank you.
  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2016
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2016
    Unblocking the file or disabling protected view is a functional workaround, but I was able to completely resolve this issue by uninstalling the 2015 DisplayLink drivers. DisplayLink has new drivers available now, but I didn't try them because I don't use DisplayLink anymore.
  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2016
    using excel 2010 in windows 10 today all previously saved excel "file is corrupt and can not be opened", except one file which links the corrupt files and this appears to update from the corrupted file. If I move the corrupted files to another PC, using memory stick and file explorer the files are OK. Also today "cannot open Outlook window. Outlook and excel were fine yesterday
  • Anonymous
    October 19, 2016
    This does not work as I have a brand new laptop on Windows 10 and brand new Office 365. Any suggestions?
  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2017
    None of these solutions worked for me. Excel documents give me the error, and ultimately open up blank. Word documents open up completely corrupted (garbled text.) There is no "Unblock" item in properties. The "Protected View" option does not apply to me. I unchecked this item, and still have the issue. I upgraded my Office 2007 to Office 2016 after the Windows 10 upgrade , and the files still won't open. The Office updates did not resolve the issue either. All of my fonts are still intact. I attempted to open a few of my files on a different PC, but I get the same messages/errors, which rtells me that the files are corrupted, so I scanned for viruses with Norton Deluxe/malware with MalwareBytes. No threats found. Still unable to open my files. The only thing I noticed is that the Word & Excel icons next to the file names look slightly different than what I'm used to seeing. I set the default program to open with the appropriate program, IE: *.doc or *.docx and *.xls or *.xlsx to open with winword.exe and excel.exe, respectively. Any other ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!