You receive a "The macros in this project are disabled" error message when you run a macro in Excel 2000

When you run a macro in the Samples.xls file, you receive the following error message:

This problem occurs when you run any of the sample macros in the Samples.xls file included with Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Office and you have set the security level for macros to High.

To run the sample macros in the Samples.xls workbook, set the security level for macros to Medium or Low. To change the macro security level, follow these steps:

1. If the Samples.xls file is open, close it.
2. On the Tools menu, point to Macro and click Security.
3. In the Security dialog box, click the Security Level tab.
4. Click Medium and then click OK.
5. Open Samples.xls. When prompted whether to enable or disable macros, click Enable Macros.

When you install either Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Office, the Setup program installs the sample workbook to the following folder: NOTE: This location may be different depending on where you installed the Office program.

If you set the Excel macro security to High so that only digitally signed macros from trusted sources are allowed to run, thereby disabling unsigned macros, you will not be allowed to run sample macros in the Samples.xls workbook. Some add-ins in Microsoft Excel contain Excel version 4.0 macro code. This type of macro, also referred to as xlm, is stored in a macro sheet instead of a Visual Basic module. Excel 4.0 macros cannot be digitally signed and cannot be opened if macro security is High. To be consistent with other add-ins, Samples.xls is also not digitally signed for security.

For more information, see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.