Microsoft says last week's decision to restore automatic blocking of VBA macros in downloaded Office documents is a temporary change .
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The company announced in February that Microsoft Office would automatically block VBA macros in all documents downloaded from the Internet, following a rollout between April and June.
However, last week, right after the new feature was released to all customers last month, Microsoft warned without any real explanation that this change would be rolled back. The change affects Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word.
This again leaves Windows and Microsoft Office users exposed to attacks launched through Office documents, with malicious macros embedded.
“Based on feedback, we are rolling back this change from Current Channel. We appreciate the feedback we have received so far and are working to improve this experience,” the company told admins in the Microsoft 365 message center.
“We will provide another update when we are ready to roll out again to the Current Channel. Thank you.“
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While the company disclosed the change to administrators after the M365 message center updates, it failed to make a public announcement and updated the original notice to say that it was a temporary rollback only after customers discovered that the Office macro blocking was no longer enabled.
"Following user feedback, we have temporarily rolled back this change while we make some additional changes to improve usability," explained Kellie Eickmeyer, a program manager at Microsoft.
Microsoft determined the temporary rollback of this long‑awaited Office security enhancement based on user feedback and has not yet disclosed what it wants to change to improve usability.
“I apologize for any inconvenience the rollback caused before the update about the change was released,” Angela Robertson, GPM lead for Identity and Security on the Microsoft 365 Office team, told confused customers last week.
See also: Microsoft: Revokes Office macro blocking by default
Although the company did not share the negative feedback that led to the rollback, customers reported that they cannot re‑enable macros after their automatic blocking because they cannot find the Unblock button to remove the Mark‑of‑the‑Web from downloaded files.
Some administrators also believe that the decision was a problem for end users who would find it cumbersome to unblock each downloaded Office document multiple times throughout the day.
