Found an issue today opening word documents downloaded from the net or saved from an email attachment today.

When trying to open I would get the following error message:

“Word experienced an error trying to open the file”

Turns out Word was having issues if a file was “Blocked” i.e. downloaded from a untrusted source like the internet or email.

You can fix this by “unblocking” the file in the properties panel here:

Thrilling stuff I know … but hopefully I will save someone from the same frustration I had this morning trying to open a docx emailed to me.

I cant remember needing to do with with Office 2010.

UPDATE:  Tobias Lekman has a good post on this and how to turn it off once and for all in Office.  You can tweak the Protected Mode settings to change the behavior.  You can read about that here: http://blog.lekman.com/2012/10/remove-protected-view-from-office-2013.html

-CJ