![]() ![]() After version 5.0 that option was discontinued. XLM was the default macro language for Excel through Excel 4.0, but beginning with version 5.0, Excel recorded macros in VBA by default, although XLM recording was still allowed as an option. It is very, very unlikely you will miss Excel 4.0 macros. Will take a while to reach enterprises and needs Office 365 client but eventually this will reach lots of people and really help defenders. For some the glass is half full, while others are asking “why has this glass been half empty for so long?” Most feel this should have been done long ago. Trust me, it’s not easy to make all security professionals happy at once. Monthly Enterprise Channel: Complete by mid-December.Current Channel: Complete by mid-November.Insiders-Slow: Complete in early November.It will be disabled for all Microsoft 365 users by the end of the year, but the exact schedule depends on which kind of customer you are: Microsoft announced plans to disable Excel 4.0 macros in an email sent to customers. I understand the argument in favor of keeping it back then, but why keep it enabled by default for so long after, when so few people use it? Microsoft could have made it so that those that needed Excel 4.0 macros had to turn the feature on, and the rest of us (the overwhelming majority of Excel users) could have been more secure without having to remember to turn it off. Office documents have been a favorite hiding place of malicious code ever since.įor backward compatibility reasons the feature was never removed, despite being superseded by Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) just one year after it was introduced. Unfortunately, we soon learned that (like any code) macros could be made to perform malicious tasks. They allowed users to add commands into spreadsheet cells that were then executed to perform a task. Better late than never, right?Įxcel 4.0 macros, aka XLM macros, were first added to Excel in 1992. After three decades of macro viruses, and three decades of trying to convince every single Excel user individually to disable macros, Microsoft is going disable Excel 4.0 macros for everyone. Sometimes good news in the security world comes unexpectedly. ![]()
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