GPO - Turn off Office 2010 Protected View with Group Policy

Introduction

Had a fun time trying to work out how to disable Protected View with Group Policy. While it was staring me in the face and I was being a little silly there are lots of settings and a few ways of doing it.

This was worked for me and stopped all files being opened in protected view, this may not be right for your network if you have a strong security policy as any file downloaded from the internet would open without protected view.

This was needed for us with lots of files being uploaded and downloaded from out client sites we host.

Steps (6 total)

1

Open Group Policy Editing

And find the policy you want to edit, as a general rule don't edit the default policy. Create your own.

If you don't know much about group policy checkout other how to's and online bits about how to setup your own policy. It can break your whole network (yes thats from experience)

2

Download the ADM templates

http://shink.in/70dB4

Extract the files to somewhere safe that you can reference again later if needed.

3

Add the template into the group policy into user configuration

Expand

You can do this by:

User configuration
Right click Admin templates
Add/Remove template
Add
Point it at the templates you downloaded
Ok
Close
Ta-Da

4

Turn off protected view

Navigate into the new template will be called Microsoft Word 2010
Word Options
Security
Trust Center
Protected View

Disable - Open files on local intranet UNC in protected view
Enable - Do not open files in unsafe locations
Enable - Do not open files from internet zone
Enable - Turn off protected view for attachments opened from outlook

5

Do the same for excel and powerpoint

Expand

Its in the same place as above (well other than being called excel or powerpoint)

6

Run a GP update

and your done!

Conclusion

This is how i fixed the issue of protected view on my network it may not be the right way and it may not do what you want it to but works perfect for me and how my network needs it to :-)

Source: https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/3687-turn-off-office-2010-protected-view-with-group-policy

Summary: 

The Protected View settings are specific to each application in Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint only), and to each year (2010 and 2013 only).

Grab the ADMX templates, install them to the PolicyDefinitions folder for the domain, or add them individually to a GPO in Group Policy Management.

The settings are in: User Configuration, Policies, Administrative templates, Microsoft $PRODUCT $YEAR, $PRODUCT Options, Security, Trust Center, Protected View, "Do not open files in unsafe locations in Protected View", Enable.