Friday 6 January 2012

Adding a UNC path containing an IP address as a Trusted Location in Office 2007/2010

If you try and add a network share/UNC path to the 'Trusted Locations' in Office 2007/2010, it will give you an error ("The path you have entered cannot be used as a Trusted Location for security reasons.") if the path you are adding contains an IP address instead of a hostname, e.g. \\10.10.10.1\share. You receive this error even if you have checked the "Allow Trusted Locations on my network (not recommended)" box. Apparently you are only able to add UNC paths, e.g. \\hostname\share.

There appears to be a very simple workaround to this - simply open up Internet Options and add the IP address to your 'Trusted Sites', (file:IP address). Sites listed in your Trusted Sites seem to also be treated as Trusted Locations in Office.

UPDATE 17.06.2014
As mentioned in the comments, this is how to get to the Trusted Sites tab in Internet Options:

Open Internet Explorer --> Settings --> Internet Options --> Security --> Zone: Trusted Sites --> Sites 
or
Open Control Panel --> Internet Options --> Security --> Zone: Trusted Sites --> Sites
Posted by at
Labels:

15 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 October 2012 at 01:44

    Googled my guts out on this one - thanks heaps for that fix - works perfeclty!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown2 April 2013 at 15:31

    Thanks for the tip, googled "cannot add trusted location by ip address" and this addressed my challenge. thanks for your blog.

    The "captcha" requirements are ridiculous! I think a robot would do a better job than I at reading these things.... 5 tries to get one through!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown11 June 2013 at 19:16

    This is GOLD! I have been struggling to fix this on our network for the longest time. I want our users to get the warning from Internet docs but NOT from local docs. This secret needs to get out; mind if I share this on FB?

    Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Quick-Tech Computer Repair Services16 June 2013 at 18:14

    does not work for me

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous30 October 2013 at 11:01

      Does not work for me either

      Delete
  5. Yendor Nemingha25 February 2014 at 16:21

    Brilliant! - thank you soooo much for posting this

    ReplyDelete
  6. Mike Betts20 March 2014 at 05:35

    Just in case you struggled to find where to add your IP as per above.
    Open IE --> Internet Options --> Security --> select Zone: Local intranet --> Sites --> Advanced and then you can add file://IP Address
    Tip works for me! Thanks J.G.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. J.G.17 June 2014 at 11:03

      Thanks Mike, glad it worked for you - I'll add the location into the original post...

      Delete
  7. Unknown17 January 2016 at 16:45

    4 years later, this still continues to save lives.

    ReplyDelete
  8. BTA Engineer17 January 2018 at 18:14

    6 years later, this still continues to save lives.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Unknown24 October 2018 at 09:53

    6 years, 9 months, and 18 days later, this continues to save lives.
    Thanks, JG!

    ReplyDelete
  10. DeepDarbe30 November 2018 at 06:17

    Thanks.. 6 years, 10 months, later, this continues to save lives.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Unknown2 April 2020 at 20:10

    8 years, 5 months later, this still continues to save lives.

    ReplyDelete
  12. J.G.5 February 2022 at 05:52

    10 years and a month later, J.G. finally remembers to check the comments again and sees all the above - so glad the few moments I took to note this down over a decade ago has helped you all out!!!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)