But, I did just run a test by downloading the sheet from Google Docs in Excel format, then opened it in the newest version of Excel. It looks like this latest Excel version has a “Protected Mode” that by default is enabled for any spreadsheet downloaded from the Internet.

While that is certainly a good thing, the message “Office has detected a problem with this file. Editing it may harm your computer” is VERY poorly written.

Assuming you are seeing the same message, if you click the “more information” link and read through the Excel help pages on it, you’ll see that it is not saying the file IS malicious, but that it has been put in protected mode by default because it came from the Internet.

You can click on protected mode view settings and turn off different things, but I have not played with protected mode at all yet. In any case, confusing even to me and I’m an information technology and security professional!

If you are leery of this or any other Excel file, a good trick would be to download the file, then upload it to your own Google Docs and use it there. Then you would not have to worry about any security risks as all the processing is done on their server and not your PC.