Microsoft ActiveX will be disabled by default in Office 2024

Office 2024, the latest version of Microsoft's most widely used office suite, will be officially released later this year. In addition to new features, the suite will include various changes, improvements, and security updates. One of these changes will directly affect users whose workflows involve documents with ActiveX objects.

If you don't know, ActiveX is a framework library for defining reusable software components in a programming language in an independent way. Application programs can be created from one or more of these components to provide functionalities. ActiveX can now be considered an outdated technology of Microsoft.

With Office 2024, ActiveX controls in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio will be disabled by default without any warning to users. Microsoft provided this warning in a post on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (MC884011) that reads as follows:

Starting with the new Office 2024, the default configuration setting for ActiveX objects will change from “Prompt me before enabling all controls with minimal restrictions' to “Disable all controls without notification”. This change applies to the Win32 PC versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio.

Users will no longer be able to create or interact with ActiveX objects in Office documents when this change is rolled out. Some existing ActiveX objects will still display as static images, but will not be interactable. In non-commercial SKUs of Office, users will see the following message when an ActiveX object is blocked by the new default behavior: “The new default setting is equivalent to the existing DisableAllActiveX group policy setting”.

This change will roll out in October, alongside the release of Office 2024. Microsoft 365 apps will get the same treatment in April 2025.

Microsoft understands that some companies still need access to ActiveX objects, so three manual activation methods are provided:

• In the Trust Center Settings dialog box , under ActiveX Settings , select the Prompt me before enabled all controls with minimal limits option .
• In the registry, set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Security\DisableAllActiveX to 0 ( REG_DWORD ).
• Set the Disable All ActiveX group policy setting to 0 .

The decision to disable ActiveX in Office 2024 marks another step in a multi-year process to phase out the framework, which has been notorious for security issues and poor user experience. However, Microsoft is still allowing ActiveX to be enabled for compatibility reasons in Office applications and Microsoft Edge via Internet Explorer mode.