Trusted Locations

Starting with Access 2007, Microsoft implemented the concept of Trusted Locations. If you received a database file from an external source and open it for the first time, you might see the image shown in Figure 1.

To protect users from malicious code, Access automatically disables code execution for all untrusted database files. What it means is that any VBA code will not execute until the file is trusted or the code is enabled (some actions in embedded macros and the Autoexec macro will still run). To enable the code, you can click on the "Enable Content" button on the Security Warning bar shown in Figure 1. However, rather than enable the code for every database file you open, you can also choose to store them in a "trusted location."

How to add a Trusted Location

To create a trusted location, go to the Office button (Access 2007) or the File tab (Access 2010 and later) and click on Access Options (2007) or Options (2010 and later) to open the Access Options Dialog Window. From the Access Options Dialog Window, click on the "Trust Center" label on the left navigation pane as shown in Figure 2.



From the Trust Center pane, click on the "Trust Center Settings..." button to open the Trust Center Dialog Window. From the Trust Center Dialog Window, click on the Trusted Locations label on the left navigation pane as shown in Figure 3.

To add a trusted location, click on the "Add new location..." button to open the Trusted Location Dialog Window as shown in Figure 4.

Clicking on the "Browse..." button will open a file browser window where you can search for the folder that you want to designate as a Trusted Location. You can also place a check mark on the checkbox labeled "Subfolder of this location are also trusted" if you want to trust all files in the subfolders from that folder location.

After you have selected the folder you want to designate as a trusted location, just click on the OK button, as shown in Figure 5, to close the folder browser window. Click OK on the Trusted Locations Dialog Window to add the selected folder to the list of trusted locations.

Figure 6 displays the selected folder was added to the list of Trusted Locations for your computer. If you want to remove a folder from the list of Trusted Locations, highlight the folder and then click on the "Remove" button.

When you have finished configuring your system's Trusted Locations, click "OK" to close the Trust Center Dialog Window and then click "OK" one more time to close the Access Options Dialog Window.

When a folder is designated as a Trusted Location, any database file stored in that location will have their code automatically enabled when the user opens the database file, and the warning message shown in Figure 1 will not display.

Original post date: February 23, 2015