The issue is seen as a result of the way Office is designed.
With an Office application like Winword.exe, when you open any Office file (for example, Test.docx), it creates a temp file inside the user's
%temp% folder as a
.tmp file. This temp file is removed automatically after the Office application closes.
NOTE: This behavior is unique to Microsoft Office and is not the case with
Notepad.exe or any other Windows application.
When you apply an FRP File Encryption policy to a system:
- It first looks for any output generated by a specific process (Winword.exe).
- It then creates a temp file in the user's temp folder, which then becomes encrypted by the FRP policy.
Because the Office temp file is encrypted, the actual Office source document becomes encrypted.
NOTE: By default, if you double-click on any Office file, it opens the file in '
Write Mode'. This mode allows the file to be encrypted and is the default mode for any opened Office file.