Trusting excel documents

[Griffyn]

Hi all,

We have an internal webservice (written by me), that produces workbooks in Excel 2003 on WinXP Pro. (I can look at upgrading this to a later version if the only solution requires it to be.) The webservice invokes Excel as an OLE object to generate the workbook.

Users download the generated-on-the-fly workbooks via Firefox and open them in Excel 2016. Excel 2016 opens them in Protected Mode, because it thinks the workbook has been downloaded from the Internet. It's simple enough for them to click the yellow Enable Content bar and all is good, but I'm wondering what's involved in removing this step.

What should my approach be?

Many thanks in advance,
Griffyn

 

[combo]

You can try to modify trust center settings, esp. trusted places (add/remove locations) and protected view rules: (1) internet, (2) temporary files folder, and (3) outlook attachments.

combo

 

[Griffyn]

Hi Combo,

I'm guessing you're referring to changes on the client side, which I'm hesitant to do, because

a) This would presumably remove protection for actual internet documents, that should remain in protected mode
b) I've got 100 clients, half of which are at remote sites.

I'm not that familiar with the Trust Center and how it's supposed to work, so any further guidance is welcome. When I go to the Trust Center options on the client PC (Excel 2016), there's nothing there aside from hiding or showing the yellow Protected Mode bar.

 

[combo]

Yes, the settings are individual on the client side. Note that files downloaded to trusted locations are oened with enabled edition.

File > Options displays options dialog, Trust Center item is at the bottom of the list on the left. I have Office 2016 professional. After clicking Trust Center I have two sections, in the second (Microsoft excel - Trust center) there is a button "Trust Center Settings", that shows another dialog with detailed security settings.
Guess that since office 2007 microsoft changed security policy from based mostly on trusted documents to trusted locations. I haven't tested this, but switching off protected view may still be relatively secure - macros are disabled separately.



combo