Trust access to the VBA project object model greyed out

Question

I'm on MS office 2013. I need to uncheck the "Trust access to the VBA project object model" check box for some testing purpose. But I'm unable to do so, as it is greyed out (and it is checked).

What might be the reason. How can I enable the check box?

Answer 1

According to Plan security settings for VBA macros for Office 2013:

Office 2013 provides a setting that enables you to change the security warning settings and the behavior of VBA macros. Use the following guidelines to determine how to configure this setting if you want to change how users are notified about untrusted VBA macros or change the default behavior of VBA macros.

You can check this article for how to change the Group Policy.

Summary:

1. At the Run command, type gpedit.msc, and then choose ENTER.
2. In the Local Group Policy Editor tree or the Group Policy Management Editor tree, find the security setting that you want to configure.

In your case, look for Disable VBA for Office applications.

Answer 2

I've been searching for the solution to this one for ages and have just discovered it's not a GPO thing but potentially an issue with multiple versions of Office on the same PC and/or maybe even a Microsoft bug. I searched the registry for the AccessVBOM Value and found it present in several Office version branches, in the HKCU and HKLM hives and finally the WOW6432 node of the HKLM hive. When I renamed the one below to "AccessVBOM2", the UI option is no longer greyed out:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Security\AccessVBOM

These are the other locations I found (for the PowerPoint 2016 app):

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Security\AccessVBOM HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Security\AccessVBOM