Strange Behaviour Win 11 and MS Word

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

If I receive a Word document as an attachment to an email, when I try to open that document I see a message "Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions..."

I can open the file if I first save it then right click and select 'Properties' then select 'Unblock'.

It always worked in a much more straightforward way under Win 10. Why is that behaviour no longer available, just this tedious, circuitous route?

davewin11 · Oct 20, 2021

Georgie Boy said:
If I receive a Word document as an attachment to an email, when I try to open that document I see a message "Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions..."

I can open the file if I first save it then right click and select 'Properties' then select 'Unblock'.

It always worked in a much more straightforward way under Win 10. Why is that behaviour no longer available, just this tedious, circuitous route?

Hi
Double click on attachment works for me on Outlook 2013
Dave

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

Sadly that doesn't work.

davewin11 · Oct 20, 2021

Georgie Boy said:
Sadly that doesn't work.

Have you tried opening a simple doc?

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

Office version is 2016. I can open any document in Word without problem. The exception is documents sent as email attachments.

When I try to open these by clicking on the document file in the email I receive the "Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions..." message. Saving the file (to desktop for example) then trying to open also doesn't work; the same error message shows up. But by right clicking on the document, selecting 'Properties' and then selecting the 'Unlock' option allows Word to properly open the file. This never happened before whilst I was using Win 10.

TigerTom · Oct 20, 2021

You might check in Word Options-Trust Center-Trusted Locations

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

Been there. Done that.

davewin11 · Oct 20, 2021

Is the problem confined to Word or do the other Office applications have the same problem?

barman58 · Oct 20, 2021

There is an perceived issue with the sending location for your files, it is best if you can to obtain the files from another location that does not trigger the flag.

If this is not possible there are various different options to remove the blocks or to stop them becoming blocked at all. I must add that is a case of circumventing a safety device that may if stopped would allow malware onto your system or your data off it

This is the possibilities from Winaero, ( a well known trusted site ) It is marked for Windows 10 but should be OK for Windows 11

Disable downloaded files from being blocked in Windows 10

When you try to open or execute the downloaded file, Windows 10 prevents you from opening it directly. Here is how to change this behavior.

winaero.com

Our own tutorials are here ..

Unblock File Downloaded from Internet in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you different ways on how to unblock files downloaded from the Internet depending on how they were blocked in Windows 11. When you download files from the Internet, Windows 11 shows you a security warning every time you try to open it by default. Some file types are...

www.elevenforum.com

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

As far as I know only Word documents are affected. It is clearly something peculiar to my PC and it is something that only happened after migrating from Win 10 Pro 64 bit to Win 11.

Emails with Word documents attached that I send are unaffected, only inbound emails with Word attachments. I have the work around mentioned above so it is a slight inconvenience rather than a show stopper. Annoying, though. :)

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

@barman58
Thanks for the info/link. My Word documents are held on a NAS and I link them from there to outgoing emails. Folk that I send my emails to have reported no problems but when I try to open attachments that I have sent (by reading the outgoing email that I have created) or when trying to read incoming email attachments, the issue arises (hope that makes sense). As I mentioned, I have the workaround...

barman58 · Oct 20, 2021

There should be a method Listed in the links in my previous post, to set the email addresses you recieve from as safe which would prevent the block

Georgie Boy · Oct 20, 2021

@barman58
Thanks. I'll read it more carefully :)

Hazel123 · Oct 20, 2021

Just tried it out on my W11. No issues at all. A left click opens the word document. A right click gives the option to open or save. That's with Word 2013. And using Microsoft outlook email (ie the web based email). Which email provider are you using? It might be to do with that - they all have different quirks.

Strange Behaviour Win 11 and MS Word

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