Cannot open some Office files after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10

Hi everyone,

This is Bryan from the Office team.  We are extremely sorry to learn that some of you are running into an issue with Office after upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 where some of your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are failing to open with various error messages, such as:

• Word: “Word experienced an error trying to open the file”
• Excel: “This file is corrupt and cannot be opened”
• PowerPoint:
  • “The application was unable to start correctly"
  • “PowerPoint found a problem with <filename>"
  • “Sorry, PowerPoint can’t read <filename>"

We are actively working on a fix to resolve this issue, but in the meantime, if you are running into this issues the following workaround should help unblock you:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086786

This issue is encountered when a document is opened in Protected View. Protected View is a security feature in Office that opens potentially untrusted files in a secure sandbox where users can read them without fear of the file taking over their computer.  You may have seen a number of posts that recommend solutions to disable or bypass Protected View to prevent this issue. We strongly discourage you from following these suggestions as it reduces the security of Office and leaves your computer open to attack from malicious users.

Once the workaround is completed, files which were previously causing this issue, should now open in Protected View allowing you to read them first within a secure sandbox and allow you to enable editing if you trust these files and need to work with them further.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused due to this issue!

Sincerely,

Bryan

But what happens when you upgrade from 8?  all of my applications are crashing, and Outlook says I have an unlicensed product, so my e-mails are crashing too.

Benoit,

You are kidding, right?  All the money and technology available to you at Microsoft and nobody thought about installing the software into a few computers who had been running various versions of Windows and let them increase the intensity of their use to test possible issues with compatibility.  For the first time, I am considering using a Mac.  I am so disappointed about my experience with Windows 8 to the point that my new computer had to use 7 and now this.   I think I should short your stock today.  I am beyond frustrated and the lack of urgency on your behalf seems totally inappropriate.

The problem is much worse if you upgraded from Windows 8.  Everything crashes, you get a message that says you have an unlicensed product, and the "workaround" doesn't work.  It was certainly a mistake to accept the upgrade.  My computer is now useless, and I'm overseas, so a call to Microsoft would cost a fortune.

Thanks very much for your post.  The only thing stopping me from doing what you did was I have preinstalled Office 2013 and couldn't find the product key.   TomKC

I also have tried both work around fixes and reinstalled Office 365 and no results.  The performance speed seems to be faster, but faster is not better when you can't use the Office Suite Programs.

This does not work!

I just spent 2 hours on the phone with your representative Manesh......and he hung up on me and never called me back!

i cannot access my Word or any files

Please help