Office 2010 Trust Center settings: How to enable data connections in the "old" way?

Posted by GSerg on Super User See other posts from Super User or by GSerg
Published on 2012-06-22T20:37:51Z Indexed on 2012/06/22 21:18 UTC
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We're planning an upgrade Office 2003 -> 2010 and have identified a big problem.

In Office 2003, if the workbook you're opening contains a query table that fetches data from a data source automatically (upon file open or in certain intervals), then a security dialog pops up - whether you want to allow that.

  • If you say Yes, the queries will refresh automatically when they need to.
  • If you say No, the queries will not refresh automatically, neither on file open nor on time intervals, but you will be able to refresh any of them manually at any time by right-clicking and selecting Refresh.
  • There is also a registry parameter to say, Don't display that dialog, just allow the queries.

This is exactly what we want.
On users' computers we have the registry parameter applied, so the users never see any dialogs.
On developers' computers the parameter is not applied, so every time a file is opened the developer decides whether to allow the auto-refreshing for the current session. Usually the answer is No, because for developing, it is essential to not have quieres refresh when they want to, but instead, refresh them when the developer wants.


The problem is that in Office 2010 which we are testing we can't find a way to achieve this functionality:

  • The allow/disallow messages are now grouped into one yellow button, that either allows everything or disallows everything (including, say, macros, if macro security is set to "Disable, but ask").
  • If you don't click the yellow Allow button, the queries are disabled completely, not just for automatic execution. You cannot right-click and refresh a particular query -- doing that would summon a security dialog prompting for enabling queries, and if you say Yes, all queries in the document will be enabled for auto-execution and will start executing immediately.

This sort of ruins our development environment.

Is there a way to get the trust thingies in Office 2010 to work in the same way as before? Is there a yet another registry parameter to say, Prompt for auto-refresh, but allow manual refresh even when auto-refresh is disabled?

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