Macro-scopic

 WTF?

 Just thought I'd drop a quick one to complain about something other than Autodesk/Revit (refreshing - I know!)

 So... Microsoft.

 Fuck Microsoft. 

 I've had a long running visceral hatred for Microsoft, and their seeming inability to remove their collective heads from their collective asses on a number of fronts - but especially when it comes to their flagship O/S.

 But I didn't come here to tell you about that today.

 Today - it's Office 365.

 Fuck Office 365.

Specifically Excel, and even more specifically, the decision to block macros.

Theoretically, it should be as simple as allowing macros, either file by file, by publisher, etc. - but after fighting it for several hours the other day, the only way it would work was to dump the file I needed to open into a folder, and then add that folder to the 'Trust Center'.

Once I figured this out, I was immediately up against a problem with the glorified spreadsheet the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify - where they added a new option that promptly broke it

 Fuck the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify.

They regularly make changes to this glorified spreadsheet that break functionality, while adding questionable benefit (sound familiar? cough Revit cough).

In this case, the solution was incredibly simple, but even after contacting my rep, and him contacting his rep, nobody was able to explain what the solution was, but it was suddenly not running extremely important calculations that I needed to do projects and produce accurate bills of material.

Only after sitting down with one of our more intelligent salesmen and going through it line by line were we able to figure out what they had changed, and how to fix it.  I told  my rep about it, but amusingly never got any response - and I'm sure it's going to fuck other people who are under the gun, and make the mistake of using the most recent spreadsheet.

There will also be a fuckload of them up against the macro blocking - and it was one of my co-workers running up against it today that reminded me (and making me have to recall the steps I took to fix it).  I forwarded both the file and instructions of how to fix both problems to another one of our salesmen, but I'm probably going to have to make sure everyone at all of our branches that use it get this information as well.

The stated reason for the macro blocking (which apparently started last year, rolled back, then re-implemented again) was to 'to stop threat actors from abusing the feature to deliver malware via email attachments', which is great and all, but if it prevents me from (or requires me to scour the internet for a solution of how to) use files that I know the origin of, purposefully downloaded, and didn't even come from an e-mail (for fucks sake) then 'fuck  you' is the only proper response.

Apparently it has been effective, as 'threat actors' have been moving away from using macros to distribute malware - but (of course) it just means they've moved on to another way of accomplishing the same task, while leaving legitimate users attempting to access legitimate files to have to find workarounds when the 'official solution' doesn't fucking work.

C'est la vie I guess.

 But I don't have to like it - and everyone responsible (including 'threat actors') can go fuck themselves.

Sincerely,

-Skullfuck

 Next Time: I finally get around to reviewing Revit 2023 MEP bullshit.