Allowing Macros in the trust center of publisher does nothing to prevent this popup. Allowing Macros or ActiveX Plugins in excel does nothing to prevent the popup. Setting a trusted location in excel also does nothing to prevent this. Using a local folder VS a network share VS sharepoint also does nothing.
The only way we were able to eliminate this need to enable macros for this document was to create a brand new base image with no patches installed. Eventually, we couldn't figure out a timeframe or patch that was installed, the issue would just start coming up and the only thing that would remove it would be a system restore or a fresh install again. I believe this is because a registry key gets set that doesn't revert on uninstall. You can see this same experience referenced here : -us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-publisher-security-information-mess...
df19127ead