eDiscovery and Microsoft Office Trust Center

Using eDiscovery products to catalog and convert mass files into data and images works well, but often the unattended processes get hung up on security prompts or prompts from macros. Manually processing hundreds or thousands of those "errors" can be a real pain.


Office 2007/2010 Trust Center settings can save you a lot of hassle.
 
Things to do (make these changes on all reprocessing workstations and "worker" servers):
2007: Office button - Word Options -
2010: File - Options -

1. Disable all macros without notification.

Trust Center - Trust Center settings - Macro Settings
* Disable all macros without notification


2. Create Trusted Locations
Trust Center - Trust Center settings -Trusted Locations
* "Allow Trusted Locations on my network" (Don't you trust your network?)
* "Add New Location" and enter a path to trust. IPro eCapture's QC app has a temporary work path that starts with:

c:\programdata\application data\ipro tech\

Make sure to trust the sub-folders as well.

3.  Disable "Protected View" (Office 2010 only)
Trust Center - Trust Center settings - Protected View

I would not recommend turning these off because #2 (Create Trusted Locations) should cover you. Odds are, if you are processing eDiscovery, you have put the files in a trusted location before you begin processing. Turning these settings off would be my last resort, but it should allow you to process files without extra prompts and interruptions.

The Protected view allows you to completely disallow saving, editing, printing of files that may be unsafe. The default things to protect are files from the internet, Outlook attachments, and files in potentially unsafe locations (like temporary internet files). You can also choose to turn on/off DEP (Data Execution Prevention) mode.



Keep in mind that these settings may affect a workstation that may be intended to work with those macros. Use these if you have a special workstation for faster reprocessing or if those settings will not affect the regular workstation use.