Forum Discussion
Excel Security Warning:
Hello Everyone, I am having one strange issue. I am working on a excel which has few Power Queries and around 10 sheets. I have not created any macros. But in VBA Editor there are two VBA Projects. But they do not have any macros in it.
Now the issue is, every time I open this excel file, I have been greeted with the "Security Warning: External Data connections have been disabled". and I need to press the "Enable Content" button every time.
I have tried saving the file as .xlxs (from .xlam) but it didn't solve the issue completely, it does not throw error in some machines still and I have also tried to remove these two projects which has but no luck.
Can someone let me know if this is a known issue? What are possible ways I can remove this warning (only for this file) as technically I am not using any macros.
Any help would be highly appreciated. Let me know if you need more details.
Thanking you.
2 Replies
Hello Sourav1981
OK the .xlam file extension is used for Excel Add-Ins. It has been a long time since I worked with Add-Ins but these are automated workbooks that are a bit more secure and not really open for user manipulation beyond what the automation allows. It is how you would share a workbook that does a certain function and not have the "Average User" muck it up.
I would suggest to acquire a digital signature and ask the Add-In developer to digitally sign the add in workbook. And you can also save the Add in workbook in a Trusted Location (maybe OneDrive).
As I said earlier its been a long time since I worked with add ins and things may have changed. But I think these options are still worth checking into.
Best of luck!
GiGi
This warning appears because your Excel file has Power Queries and hidden VBA project shells, even if no macros exist. Excel treats them as external connections, so it asks you to enable content every time. Saving as XLSX removes VBA, but Power Query can still trigger the warning on some systems. To fix it, clear all unused queries, remove any leftover connections, and resave the file as a clean XLSX. In many cases, that’s the only way to stop the warning.
