Excel VBA: Digital Signature applied in XLSM template file, but macro security warning was still appearing

Digital Signature in XLSM template file

In our case, we ensured that Digital Signature was applied with latest certificate to XLSM templates of Excel 2007. However for some reason, it had no effect on macro security warning. When templates were deployed and checked with web application which invoke and generate the report based on that XLSM template, we found that security warning appearing at the top. We rechecked the Digital Signature on those reports and surprisingly it had latest certificate. We couldn’t understand why this problem is occurring though we put latest Digital Signature correctly on template file.

Someone suggested that they had similar issue and their issue was related to sorting of cells. We tried to remove such code where sorting of cells was used.

ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("XYZ").Sort.SortFields.add Key:=Range("AJ2"), _

        SortOn:=xlSortOnValues, Order:=xlAscending, DataOption:=xlSortNormal

If Sheet2.Range("Test").count > 0 Then

    With ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("XYZ").Sort

        .SetRange Range("AJ2:AJ3")

        .Header = xlNo

        .MatchCase = False

        .Orientation = xlTopToBottom

        .SortMethod = xlPinYin

        .Apply

    End With

End If

However removing such code as mentioned above didn’t helped to fix the issue.

Finally we tried to explore referenced and unreferenced named ranges. We tried to remove unreferenced named range one by one and then reapply the digital signature on the template. Luckily we found that one of the defined named range which was not used anywhere was having some relation with this issue. Since that named range was not needed, we deleted it from named range list. As soon as it was removed and digital signature was reapplied, macro security warning was gone. Everything worked fine!!