Active Content In Word

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Active Content

If you read our tutorial on enabling content in Word, you might be wondering what precisely active content is. Active content is additional functionality in a document, such as that provided by macros, add-ins, or data connections. Because of its risky nature, the active content in a document causes a warning to be issued when you open it. After seeing this warning you can then decide to either enable the content or play it safe and leave it disabled. Much of your decision depends on how much you trust the document’s source.

This tutorial list all the active content types that will trigger this security warning.

Active Content

When the following kinds of active content are detected by the Trust Centre in your document, the Message Bar appears and issues a warning:

  • ActiveX controls
  • Add-ins
  • Data connections
  • Macros
  • Excel 4.0 macros
  • Spreadsheet links

The following kinds of external content are linked externally to the file or embedded within it. Therefore, they’re also blocked:

  • Linked object linking and embedded (OLE) files
  • Colour-theme files
  • Cascading style sheet (CSS) files
  • XML expansion packs
  • Links to external pictures
  • Media files
  • Real-time data servers
  • XML manifests
  • Smart documents