OLE 2.0 error when opening Word/Excel attachment in Outlook

Question

Hello

Please i need your help on this issue.

We are having OLE 2.0 error when opening Word/Excel attachment in Outlook.

Multiple users in our organization having issues opening Word/Excel attachment in Outlook from external email addresses, they get prompted with OLE 2.0 error as attached. 

We've found that turning off "Protected View for Outlook Attachments" in Word/Excel suppress this error, but I understand it is not MS recommended, would you be able to look into why enabling "Protected View for Outlook Attachment" cause this error.

Note that, we already tried repairing, complete uninstall/reinstall of Office & reregistering OLE (regsvr32 ole32.dl, regsvr32 oleaut32.dll) & nothing fixed the issue except for disabling Protected View.  Also note that this is only happening on few users & not on all.

Answer 1

Hi IBN,

Welcome to our forum!

As I know: Files from the Internet and from other potentially unsafe locations may contain viruses, worms, and other kinds of malware, and these can harm your computer. To help protect your computer, files from these potentially unsafe locations are opened in Protected View. However, if the email message that contains the Office document attachment originates from within your own Exchange Server organization, the attachment will open in Protected View only if you have MarkInternalAsUnsafe set to 1 in the registry. This is not the default setting for an Office configuration. By default, Office document attachments are not opened in Protected View if the email message originates from inside your own Exchange organization. More: Document attachments open in Protected View | Microsoft Learn 

Hope it helps.

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