How to Open Email Attachments in Reading View on MS Office Word?

If you want to open an email attachment in MS Word and it doesn’t let you, there’s a piece of good news for you. Although it is not recommended that you try and open any attachments from unknown sources as they may contain malware, Trojan horses, viruses, etc., sometimes it may be essential. You will have to open them anyway.

If this is the case with you, MS Word can be your savior. Office Word document has built-in settings that you can use to block these unwarranted attacks from malware, virus, etc., protecting your system.

To do that, you need to enable the Reading View mode for attachments in Word Options, and this risewindows article will teach you just how to do that.

How to Open Email Attachments in Reading View in Word using Word Options?

Use the following steps to enable Review View in Word:-

Step 1: Firstly, open a Microsoft Word document.

Step 2: Go to the File menu.

Step 3: Next, find Options on the left side.

Step 4: Switch to the General tab in the Word Options panel.

Step 5: In the “Start up options” section,  find the option “Open email attachments and other uneditable files in reading view.”

Step 6: Finally, click the OK button.

How to Open Email Attachments in Reading View in Word using Registry Editor?

To open email attachments in Reading View in Word on Windows 11 or 10 by tweaking the Registry, use the following steps:-

Step 1: As the first step, open Registry Editor.

Step 2: After that, in the Registry Editor window, navigate to the following key in the left sidebar:-

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0

Step 3: Now, right-click on the 16.0 folder and go to New > Key.

Step 4: Name the newly created key as the word.

Step 5: Next, choose New > Key by right-clicking on the word folder.

Step 6: Name the newly created key as options.

Step 7: Right-click on options and go to New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Step 8: Rename the REG_DWORD as allowautoreadingmode.

Step 9: Open the allowautoreadingmode REG_DWORD and set “Value data” as 1.

Step 10: Click on OK button.

Step 11: Reboot your computer as the final step and apply the changes.

How to Open Email Attachments in Reading View in Word through Group Policy Editor?

Use the following steps to open email attachments in Reading View in Word through Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 or 10:-

Step 1: First, open Local Group Policy Editor.

Step 2: Then, browse the following in the left sidebar:-

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Microsoft Word 2016 > Word Options > General

Step 3: Find the policy: Open email attachments in Reading View on the right sidebar of the “General” folder.

Step 4: Go to Enabled.

Step 5: Click on Apply button.

Step 6: Click on OK button.

Step 7: At last, restart your computer to apply the changes.

That’s it.

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