Implications of all macros being disabled

EndNote EndNote General
1

My organisation is planning to disable all macros across all installations of Office 2016.

What are the implications for EndNote users and CWYW in Word?

I am getting conflicting information from EndNote support and a general google search.

EndNote support says everything will work fine except keyboard shortcuts and that we must delete all .dotm files found in these dirs to avoid errors:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\ResearchSoft\Cwyw[version]
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ResearchSoft\Cwyw[version]\

I found places on a google search that said CWYW will not work at all with macros disabled. For example: https://support.alfasoft.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003671418-EndNote-CWYW-Cite-While-You-Write-add-in-in-Word-is-greyed-out … that site says “EndNote CWYW functions in Word are macros”, the implication being that if macros are disabled then CWYW will not function (disregard the actual topic on that webpage, my point is to do with that one statement).

Does anyone here have any definitive information?

2

I’m going to answer my own question for the benefit of anyone interested in this topic.

Turns out our IT dept is not interested in deleting individual files for every EndNote user in the organisation, and having to do so forever after for every new install and every upgrade, including point releases. So, surprise surprise, they are exempting EndNote users from the macro blocking.

That decision then makes my problem moot.

However, I can confirm that when macros are disabled by group policy at the network level, EndNote keyboard shortcuts no longer work. And those .dotm files must be deleted so that errors don’t get thrown up every few seconds while the software freaks out about macros being disabled.

That was a fun couple of days at work :crazy_face: