Why can't Excel show me which data connections are disabled?

When opening a workbook with an external data connection, I get a yellow warning bar:

Security Warning | Data connections have been disabled | <Click Here to> Enable Content

I've found some back-door solutions, but searching for the needle in the haystack (formulas, pivot tables, etc.) can be exhausting, and at times, I still can't find the connection.

Excel 2010, .xlsx format. The document that spurred this questions is not trusted in the Trust Center.

Is there a systemic reason Excel can't show me what these connections are? Or is it simply at Microsoft's discretion that this is not a feature?

2 Answers

This is a feature of the later versions of Office to protect computers from external connections that might allow viruses, malware or other malicious activity.

To view the data connection in the workbook, go to the Data tab, and choose Connections from the Connections menu.

The warning you are getting is because the document and/or location is not trusted by Excel. These are typically file share drives or network locations not normal to Office, like My Documents. It is not specific to any one data connection, rather just the fact there is a data connection at all.

If the document and/or location are sources you trust, you can adjust your Trust Center options to avoid this warning.

If you have a pivot table, check the data source. My pivot table was reading from an external document, however that connection did not appear in Data > Connections. Once I changed that data source to one within the file, then refreshed, the problem went away. Hope that helps.