this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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This behavior is annoying as hell, but I also think it's for the best. Excel specifically was way too trusting, has a full development environment with the ability to auto-run macros, and has become a convenient vector for delivering malicious code.
I once made an xlsx with a VBA module and put it in my often-late coworkers' startup folder. It would check log-on time and if it was between 9:01am and 9.59am it would send an email to the rest of the team apologizing for being late that day.
Stunning that I could do that on what was supposedly a locked-down internal system.
what an incredible jackass
What in the actual fuck.
I once used VBA to script and automate 90% of my old desk job. I just needed a way to automate keyboard input and some basic conditional controls.
I couldn't install python or run batch scripts as the machine was heavily locked down, but luckily MS provided all the tools I needed inside excel. System admins hate this one trick, thanks microsoft!
haha yeah same. We had this terrible internal CMS that I would automate the hell out of.
LOL pls say more
You just enable the VB script to check the system time on launch and auto close silently if outside those times.
Excel integrates with all Microsoft products so it can access Outlook and send an email. You populate the email fields as you want and put it inside an if loop of the times and exit. Even without outlook I think it might be able to send emails with some plug-ins or via a browser window, navigate to mail, and do basic webscraping and clicking like you'd do with Beautiful Soup or AHK.
The whole setup can just be worked out with some googling and stack exchange threads.
It was a running joke he was always late and it wasn't exactly the best run company so there was no negative outcomes really, just harmless fun.
My workplaces malwarebyte's settings end the excel process tree if it tries to run a script that accesses other M$ products.
Was super annoyed when I discovered that while trying to script in an email template for the form I was making, since at the time staff never cc'd the correct people and would then bitch out finance for not paying them.
I mean, if people weren't desensitized to warnings like this by getting them constantly, I think you'd be right
In IT we have to consider the signal to noise ratio of warning users.