Why disable macros?

[Robert]

A year ago I designed a lot of letterheads and equipped
each one with a little macro to insert and position the
date. All have worked perfectly until recently when I
downloaded a few more macros from an impeccable Microsoft
source. There are no other macros on my machine.

Starting recently, however, I am now shown a dialog,
before I load any letterhead, asking me to disable macros
for security reasons. My security setting is "medium"
and always has been.

How can I remove this irritating dialog please? Would it
be safe to set security to "low" as I assume that
malicious macros can still arrive on the web. Is this
true? Thank you in advance for any help.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

If you are Internet connected it is not safe to set security to "Low" IMO.

You can set your security to trust macros in your templates folder and
startup folder.

You don't need or want a macro to insert the date in a letterhead. Put a
CREATEDATE field in the template. See
http://addbalance.com/word/datefields1.htm for information on the different
kinds of datefields and how to format them.

For more on letterhead design, take a look at: How to set up letterhead or
some other document where you want one header on the first page and a
different header on other pages.
http://www.addbalance.com/word/headersfooters.htm This gives step-by-step
instructions. (It also has the following links)

Some other pages to look at:

Letterhead Tips and Instructions
http://home.zebra.net/~sbarnhill/Letterhead.htm

Letterhead Textboxes and Styles tutorial
http://addbalance.com/word/download/index.htm#LetterheadTextboxesAndStylesTutorial

Template Basics
http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm

How to Create a Template - Part 2 - essential reading
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm

Word "Forms"
http://www.addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#Forms and

Word for Word Perfect Users
http://www.addbalance.com/word/wordperfect.htm if you are coming from a WP
environment (or even if you are not).

If you are interested in creating templates that will work with the letter
wizard or use that wizard, you should look at the chapter on Advanced
Document Formatting in Using Office 2003 (or whatever your version is),
Special Edition, by Ed Bott and Woody Leonhard. It has detailed instructions
including instructions on getting the fields you want from your Outlook
Contacts for addressing a letter. (Chapter 19 of SE Using Office 2003) You
should be able to get this through your public library or at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0789729555/balancecheckbookA/

Finally, take a look at the letter templates that come with Word. While they
are no great shakes as letterhead, they do use styles and AutoText lists
very well. If you use the same style names that are used in those templates
in your own letterhead for the same parts of the document, you will have
better luck with using the built-in AutoText entries in Word.

Hope this helps,
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Pat Garard]

G'Day Robert,

Go to:
Tools > Options
File Locations (Tab)
User Templates: <Location>

If no location is defined, define one.
Put your Templates (with Macros)
in this location. This should resolve the
problem.

Any Documents that contain Macros will
always suffer, but that is for the best - you do
want to avoid Macro Virus'.

Better yet store your Macros in Normal.dot.
--
Regards,
Pat Garard
Australia

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