To ensure "Date Modified" doesn't change, want to open all Word and Excel in Read-Only or Protected Mode - how?

Question

In order to avoid OneDrive Office documents' "Date Modified" field changing whenever I open and navigate a doc, I want all OneDrive and OneDrive for Business documents to open in Read-Only or Protected Mode by default. This way I can still open and browse/read the file (and ideally, I could also print it), without accidentally changing its modified date. If I do want to edit it, I don't mind hitting the "Enable Editing" button (or taking some other simple action) shown for Protected Mode to make changes. I don't like the extra step before I can start editing, but that seems a much lesser problem than the date mangling that occurs otherwise (with no apparent solutions according to the Internet).

Yes, it is possible to open a OneDrive file and close it without changing the Modified date, but it is easy to accidentally navigate in a way that triggers a save and date change on the file. My core goal is to ensure that CANNOT happen. I don't want to the file's Modified date to change without consciously choosing to make changes to the file. Those dates are critical to me for file searching and navigation.

I also do NOT want to disable AutoSave nor turn off the OneDrive Office Sync. These are essential features for collaboration and even for a single person working on the same document across multiple computers at the same time. I see disabling these is often suggested as the solution (and it would work for that, because they are the reason the Modified date changes). That's just not viable in my case, because I value and need the benefits of OneDrive's live file access, both personal and business versions.

I also want this to be the default for all files, not just a few specific files. I know I can change this per file via File -> Protect Document -> Always Open Read Only. But that only affects one file at a time, and I need this to apply to many hundreds or thousands of files across over a hundred directories. Plus, that's too late, because then I need to re-save the document to apply that change, which changes the modified date -- the very problem I'm trying to solve.

Example of Excel showing manually set to Read Only when saving under File -> Info:

Example of Word showing a file opened from an email is in Protected Mode:

Is there a way to:

1. Reliably open and freely navigate Office documents on OneDrive without changing the Date Modified value?

2. Assuming the answer to #1 is 'no', which is my conclusion following much Internet research and attempts, how can I tell Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to always open every document (at least every OneDrive personal and OneDrive for Business document) in Protected Mode or Read-Only Mode, like in the screen shots above?

3. Is there a way to force this across all users on a tenant, preferably via a SharePoint or OneDrive setting (so it applies even to BYOD systems that wouldn't be affected by a Group Policy setting)?

Answer 1

If all you need to do is move files to/from OneDrive, a work-around I found is to zip the files and put the zipped file on OneDrive, and then download the zip to where you need it (another computer in my case) and unzip it, and the original modified dates/times are preserved, but it's a pain to have to do that.

Besides, OneDrive has no mechanism to extract one file from a zip so you can edit it, so like I said, the above is only for moving files around.