If your DisplayLink adapter is plugged in, Excel will usually hang on the Opening in Protected View screen. If you’re using a DisplayLink adapter to run an external monitor, you may encounter this issue. In many cases, this seems to be an issue with the DisplayLink drivers. Followed by the error: ‘The file is corrupt and cannot be opened’. It may also display an error that states Microsoft Excel (Protected View) has stopped working. Excel will seem to freeze or hang on Opening in Protected View. You may be experiencing an issue opening Excel documents from emails or online using Excel 2016.

Additionally, Protected View is enabled by default, and files that are located in potentially unsafe locations are opened in Protected View.Excel 2016 stuck on Opening in Protected View Problem Protected View is a read-only mode in which most editing functions are disabled.

Enable Protected View for Outlook attachments.

Enable Protected View for files located in potentially unsafe locations.

Enable Protected View for files originating from the Internet.

In the Trust Center dialog box, clear the following check boxes as appropriate for your situation: In the Excel Options dialog box, click Trust Center. To disable Protected View in Excel 2013, follow these steps: To work around this issue, temporarily disable Protected View in Excel 2013, and then open the workbook again. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.

Additionally, you receive the following error message: When you try to open an Information Rights Management (IRM) protected Microsoft Excel 97-2003 workbook (.xls file) in Protected View in Excel 2013, the operation fails. You cannot open an IRM protected workbook in Protected View in Excel 2013 Symptoms

Excel cannot open in protected view