Microsoft: Now we're switching off Excel 4.0 macros by default:
Microsoft has disabled Excel 4.0 macros by default in the latest release of its spreadsheet software to help customers protect themselves against related security threats.
That setting, released as an optional configuration in Excel Trust Center setting in July, is now the default when opening Excel 4.0 macros (XLM), Microsoft said in a blogpost.
[...] The move to restrict Excel 4.0 macros is an attempt to counter a rise in ransomware and other malware groups using Excel 4.0 macros as part of an initial infection. State-sponsored and cybercriminal attackers started experimenting with legacy Excel 4.0 macros in response to Microsoft in 2018 cracking down on macro scripts written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
The initial Excel Trust Center settings targeted organizations that wanted VBA and legacy macros to run via the setting "Enable Excel 4.0 macros when VBA macros are enabled". This allowed admins to control the behavior of macros without impacting VBA macros.
Macros are now disabled by default in Excel in build 16.0.14427.10000 and later. Admins can still configure the setting in Microsoft 365 applications policy control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @09:36AM (18 children)
I use spreadsheets from time to time, but never had to reside on using macros. Could someone explain in what use cases they actually NEED to use them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @10:49AM
Macros are needed when you don't know how to specify your desired result functionally.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @11:14AM (5 children)
To simplify mundane tasks that you keep doing over and over and over again. They are not really needed but they save time.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:36PM (4 children)
This, so much this. When I find myself doing something I could train a monkey to do, if at all possible, I make a macro for it. Assuming the task I am doing will be recurring and/or significantly long enough. Also, once you learn that Macros are a thing, stupid annoying tasks can become much less stupid and annoying.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:40PM
Notepad++ has a nice, easy to use Macro function. It is a sanity saver.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:54PM (2 children)
Training monkeys to do your repetitive spreadsheet tasks is preferable, since they are less of a security risk than anything provided by Microsoft.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @05:19PM (1 child)
Why do you hate monkeys?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27 2022, @02:56AM
H1-B program abuse.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday January 26 2022, @11:32AM (2 children)
The only thing I ever used it for was spelling out amounts. Someone needed amounts in contracts to be spelled out, so for instance in one column you have $2,193.87 which a VBA function would spell out in the next column to something like "two thousand one hundred ninety three dollars and eighty seven cents". But in a more complex language in this area, where some of those numbers have to be reversed and concatenated and €2.193,87 becomes: "eenentwintigduizend drieënnegentig euro en zevenentachtig cent". I didn't write it from scratch but found a macro that almost worked and rewrote it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27 2022, @12:11AM (1 child)
What a perfect example of what I was talking about. It is totally possible to write an Excel formula using functions only to do exactly this, but macros and VBA are much easier to wrap your mind around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 28 2022, @12:59AM
That was what I came up with for dealing with the ones place. So I cheated and googled it.
Ironically, one page I saw suggests that a program generated that formula.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday January 26 2022, @12:31PM (5 children)
Boomer managers. They get bored so they start messing around and building "productivity tools".
I knew one guy who built this entire intricate spreadsheet planning his and his family's life out using huge multi-tab spreadsheets and macros. It was more than a little insane.
Another demanded very pretty charts. They had to be really, really pretty. He needed good looking stuff for his reports up to higher management. The charts really had to be special; great colors, intricate line-work, but possible to follow from a distance. Lots of macros.
Our technical writing division (who basically were program managers for external documentation contract houses which made $$$) had entire "official" documentation templates in Word that functioned entirely off of custom macros on button bars. Not Excel. Thank god they had no reason to use Excel too. Very few people actually knew how these macros operated or how to use them.
Bidding and proposals had huge multi-tab spreadsheets for estimating project costs. They were beyond arcane, using weird custom units for measuring out man-hours and cost-basis. materials and known expenses... hour estimates broken down to individual team members. It usually took well over a week of multiple people working on it to get their spreadsheets filled in and their macros to operate without errors.
Corporate America. The only thing more insane and useless is government.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:17PM (1 child)
Managers of any age. Say things like . . .
Look! Macros let me use Excel as a database! No need to hire expensive developers who use needlessly complex database servers requiring separate front end tools to access using difficult to learn languages. They're just colluding to keep things unnecessarily complex so they can charge money.
Excel is the best database evar! VBA is simple and easy to use. I wrote a "search" function that can find the row I want in under ten seconds even on HUGE databases that have THOUSANDS of records!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 27 2022, @12:38AM
Reminds me of the time we hired a new guy who claimed all sorts of experience with different databases. However, every time he needed to add a condition to a query, he did so as a subquery. That guy had something missing from his understanding somewhere. I don't know if he didn't understand the underlying logic or operators or syntax, but every single time it was a subquery. Thank goodness the query planner could figure out a much more efficient way to do it 95% of the time until we got rid of him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:24PM
Excel: We did see a buyer FVH2 in 5k / $254k / 01 of UST belly, as well as UPSIDE protection against a “dovish surprise,” e.g. FVH2 120C ppr pays 14-1.5 on 4k…although later see more of the same “momentum” reloading back into large downside FVH2 119.5 / 119 PS ppr pays 13.5 on 25k…and also a fairly largly “buy” of ED$ May Put Fly
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:35PM
They do seem to like their Excel sheets. But with that in mind their love of Excel is nothing compared to their love of Powerpoint. If they can incorporate some Excel stuff into their powerpoint presentation and then spread it out over multiple pages it's like pure bliss and ecstasy.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 27 2022, @07:15PM
Boomers? My mom was 55 in '82 and used Lotus for EVERYTHING she did for work, including word processing. Of course, since she worked in finance, Lotus was probably the only program they had besides the OS. But someone born in 1928 was hardly a boomer.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @04:49PM
I worked at a place that didn't want to spring for "sprint tracking software" so we ended up with an excel macro that we ran each week to pull down the current state of our TFS work tracking, parsed it, (this 3 point story has 1 design point, etc) and then added a row to a table with the current date. That was then graphed to give us a burndown chart.
It was a great example of how excel is like a swiss army knife: it almost does a lot of things, but isn't the right tool for anything.
The jank was so high with this tool, in fact, that there wasn't a simple way to invoke the "refresh data from TFS", it was "create a link to the 'ribbon' and pretend to click the 'refresh' button in the 'TFS' ribbon." Sadly, there just wasn't a VB API to do it directly that I could find.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @08:21PM
If I have to do anything more complicated than putting a CSV file together from a bunch of column data, or for very simple arithmatic or plot generation, I use a useful program like R. If it is something where I need to make real plots (rather than just exploring data), I'm using R. Excel plots have always sucked big time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Wednesday January 26 2022, @03:27PM (4 children)
... but only because I know how to turn them on. Years ago I automated a task that I have to perform daily using Excel macros in combination with additional proprietary process data add-ons (which only work in Excel). I don't get to choose the software I have to work with. The IT department does that. I've been using these spreadsheets for years. A task that once took hours takes about 15 minutes now. If my proprietary data collection system worked with Libreoffice, I could probably rebuild the macros to work with that but it doesn't. What worries me is Microsoft will first turn them off by default, and maybe later disable them altogether. I just want to keep working with it for a few more years to retirement without having to reinvent the wheel because of Microsoft's arbitrariness. But like I said in another thread. If we were as efficient as we could be, they would lay off most of the staff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @06:30PM
xl4 was implemented in 1992, predates VBA.
if your tool is truly built on 30 yo tech, then it was never going to be you asked to reinvent that particular wheel.
your easy retirement plans are safe buddy.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @07:57PM (2 children)
no, your IT security people will put in a Group Policy (GPO) that disables them for everyone (except themselves). and will patiently listen to your requests while filing them to /dev/null.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @09:45PM (1 child)
It won't go to /dev/null. These are Windows IT people. They'll drag it into the Recycle Bin and it will sit there, undeleted, until they run out of disk space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26 2022, @11:29PM
click and drag is so lame, they will pinch and swipe it to the recycle tile nerf!