Access Error 2950 Action Failed: Macros Blocked Because the File Is Not Trusted

Fix it now

Your macro is fine. Access is refusing to run actions because it does not trust the file, and the two reasons for that are different: the database is not in a trusted location, or it carries the Mark of the Web because it came from outside the machine. Clearing the mark is the step people miss.

1. Close Access. Right-click the database file in Explorer, choose Properties, and if an Unblock checkbox is offered on the General tab, tick it and click OK. That removes the Mark of the Web on your local device.
2. Reopen the database. If a security bar appears under the ribbon, click Enable Content – but treat that as a test rather than a fix, because it lasts for that session only.
3. For a lasting fix, add the folder holding the database as a Trusted Location. Microsoft states that a file opened from one has the Mark of the Web check ignored and opens with macros enabled.
4. If the database lives on a share, allow trusted locations on the network before you add the UNC path, and add the path in UNC form rather than through a drive letter.
5. Close and reopen the database. The security bar should not appear, and the macro should run through to its last action.
6. Where more than a handful of people are involved, have the trusted location deployed by policy rather than configured on each workstation.

Trust a specific folder you control and that ordinary users cannot write to. Never trust a downloads folder, a profile root or a whole drive – a trusted location applies to everything placed in it, now and in future.

If the macro runs and no security bar appears, you are done. The next section explains the two blocks, which one you are hitting, and what to do when neither is the answer.

Why it happens

When Access opens a database it does not trust, it loads the objects but refuses to run anything that could act on the system or on data. The macro stops at the first such action, and the dialog names that action and its arguments – which is why the message looks like a problem with one step rather than a decision about the whole file. Nothing in the macro needs changing. The trust decision has not been made.

There are two blocks, not one, and they behave differently. The older one is disabled mode, which is what the yellow security bar is about: you can grant trust for that session with Enable Content, permanently by putting the file in a trusted location, or to the file itself by trusting the publisher who signed it. The newer one is the Mark of the Web block. Microsoft blocks macros by default in files that came from the internet across seven applications – Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, Visio and Word, on Windows – and that block does not offer you a convenient button.

The practical consequence is the thing worth remembering: a database that arrived by email or download can sit in a perfectly good trusted location and still have its macros blocked, because the mark is on the file rather than in the folder. Clearing the mark with the Unblock checkbox is the step that resolves it, and no amount of trusted-location configuration substitutes for it. Microsoft’s other documented routes out are to save the file into a trusted location, or to sign the macro and trust the publisher.

Full reference

The three ways trust is granted

Where the block is set centrally

The policy that produces the harder block is named Block macros from running in Office files from the Internet, and for Access it sits under User Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, Microsoft Access 2016, Application Settings, Security, Trust Center. The related policy is named VBA Macro Notification Settings. Those two names are worth taking to whoever manages your policy, because asking about “macro security” in the abstract gets you nowhere and asking about a named setting gets you an answer.

Distributing a database to people you do not manage

• Sign the VBA project with a code-signing certificate and have recipients trust the publisher once.
• Tell recipients how to unblock the file, because the mark is applied at their end, by their download.
• Do not tell them to enable all macros. It applies to every database they ever open, including the next one that arrives by email.
• Ship a short instruction with the file. Most of the support load on this is people who were never told the Unblock checkbox exists.

What none of these numbers are

Microsoft publishes no error-number reference for Access, so 2950, 2046, 3033, 2501 and 2467 have no vendor-defined meanings to quote, and this article’s codes table says so. Describe what the application was doing when it stopped rather than quoting a number, especially to a third party: the number will not mean anything to them either.

There is a setting that enables all macros in every database you open. Do not use it. It applies to the one that arrives by email tomorrow just as much as to the one you wrote, and a trusted folder achieves the same result for the files you actually care about.

Every code this article covers

Confirm the fix worked

1. Close and reopen the database and confirm no security bar appears.
2. Run the macro that failed and confirm it completes through to its last action.
3. Check the file’s properties and confirm the Unblock checkbox is no longer offered.
4. Check the Trusted Locations list and confirm the folder is there in the form you intended, UNC rather than a drive letter for a share.
5. Have a second user open the same file and run the same macro, because trusted locations are per user by default.

Questions people ask about this