By Rob Helm [bio]
Posted: Apr. 24, 2006

The following is an illustration accompanying an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

The Trust Center and Document Alert Bar consolidate security settings and warnings in several Office 2007 applications. Shown at the top is one of the tabs in the Word 2007 Trust Center. The Trust Center is a new dialog box—supported by all Office 2007 applications—that brings together all application security settings. Users can access the Trust Center through the application's settings dialog.

Office 2007 applications other than Outlook will also bring up a Document Alert Bar (shown below) beneath the Ribbon when the user attempts to open a document or database that contains macros or other kinds of extension code. The Document Alert Bar replaces various pop-up security dialog boxes. From the bar, users can choose whether to enable code for the particular document or database or to go to the Trust Center to adjust overall security settings.

The Trust Center and Document Alert Bar are designed to help users make security decisions and protect themselves from macro viruses and other malicious code, and they are less intrusive and more informative than the dialogs used for that purpose in earlier versions of Office. However, in large organizations, security decisions are best made centrally and enforced by Group Policy, not left to users.