Microsoft Officially Starts Blocking Office Macros by Default

pcmag.com:

Microsoft has officially disabled external Office macros by default.

If that sounds familiar, well, it's because the company announced that it would be making this change to combat malware that abuses the automation features in Office in February. But it suddenly decided to go back to having macros enabled by default earlier this month.

Then it changed its mind again by saying on July 8 that it still intended to have external Office macros disabled by default in the future—the decision to have them enabled by default was temporary.

This kind of back-and-forth about critical software—the world is practically run by people who know how to use Excel very well—is probably quite frustrating to large organizations. It's far easier to adapt to a single change than it is to constantly reevaluate Microsoft's position here.

"We’re resuming the rollout of this change in Current Channel," Microsoft said(Opens in a new window) on July 20. "Based on our review of customer feedback, we’ve made updates to both our end user and our IT admin documentation to make clearer what options you have for different scenarios."

That additional documentation is available via two support articles, one for Office users(Opens in a new window) and one for administrators(Opens in a new window). More information about Microsoft 365's release channels—Current, Monthly Enterprise, and Semi-Annual Enterprise—is also available on Microsoft's website(Opens in a new window).

Note that Microsoft is currently restricting this new default setting to the Current Channel; members of the Monthly Enterprise and Semi-Annual Enterprise will have to wait. In the meantime, organizations in the other two channels can manually disable(Opens in a new window) Office macros.

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