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Avoid the Warning from Excel Services About Refreshing External Data

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In my post earlier this month on upgrading to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010, I forgot to include the steps to change the Warn on Refresh setting of the trusted file location for the Excel Services Application.

If you leave this value set to the default (i.e. Yes), then you'll be greeted with the following message for each Excel Web Part on a TFS dashboard page:

This workbook contains one or more queries that refresh external data. A malicious user can design a query to access confidential information and distribute it to other users or perform other harmful actions.

If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes to enable queries to external data in this workbook. If you are not sure, click No so that changes are not applied to your workbook.

Do you want to enable queries to external data in this workbook?

To avoid warnings before refreshing external data in Excel Services:

  1. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
  2. On the Service Applications page, click Excel Services Application.
  3. On the Manage Excel Services Application page, click Trusted File Locations.
  4. On the Excel Services Application Trusted File Locations page, point to the trusted file location that you want to edit (e.g. https:// ), click the arrow that appears, and then click Edit.
  5. On the Excel Services Application Edit Trusted File Location page, in the External Data section, clear the Refresh warning enabled checkbox, and then click OK.

Note that if you are using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, the configuration steps will be slightly different (the setting is changed through the SSP admin page). Refer to the following for more information:

Manage Excel Services trusted file locations

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263009(office.12).aspx