How to Enable Macros In Excel 2004

Summary

Enabling macros in Excel 2000-2004 is straight forward - at least more straight forward than in Excel 2007-2010.

There are two steps:

First, make sure your global Macro Security is set to Medium. This only has to be done once and the Medium setting will be remembered when you close and open Excel and/or if you shutdown and restart your computer.

Second, with the setting on Medium, you will greeted with a prompt to Enable Macros each time you open a workbook that contains macros. If you trust the author then click Enable Macros.

This is a security feature that stops malicious macros from automatically running when the file is opened. Leaving the setting at Low will allow any macro to run without a security prompt. Malicious macros can erase or corrupt your drives and files and can access private information.

Step-by-Step (Images)

Step-by-Step

1) Set Macro-Security to Medium. This only has to be done once and will be set for all files.>

• Click on Tools at the top of the page
• Select Macro from the dropdown list
• Select Security... from the second dropdown list - a Security pop-up will now appear
• Select Medium security then click on OK.
  My preference is Medium but you can also set Security to High or Very High. This, however, will result in annoying pop-up messages to lower your settings.
• Close any open Excel files, then re-open for the changes to take effect

2) Enable Macros

• Open an Excel file and click Enable Macros at the prompt.