Atlassian companion App not able to edit xlsm

[Glen Hamilton]

Starting this morning, no users are able to edit with the companion app xlsm files.  These files were modifiable Nov 19,2020 .  

Have tried several different machines, browsers, and user access levels.

Error Generated: Atlassian Companion can't open this type of file.  

[Alex K]

Hi all, 

We have released Companion 1.2.5 which allows office documents with macros to be edited (xlsm, docm, pptm). If using the .exe or .dmg installed version, please quit and restart Atlassian Companion to fast-track the upgrade process. 

See the release notes here. 

Regards,
Alex K

[Simon Keary]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for providing the fix so quickly. It seems to be working now :)

Cheers,

Simon

[eamonn mcquaid]

Hi Alex, is this new version of the companion app compatible with Confluence server 7.2 ?

[Alex K]

Hi @eamonn mcquaid ,

The latest version of Companion is backwards compatible with all Confluence versions from 6.11 onwards. However in Confluence 7.3 we overhauled the integration which greatly improved the usability of the Edit Files feature. In Confluence 7.2, you can also get this new experience by enabling the "companion.v2" dark feature. 

Regards,
Alex K (Developer at Atlassian)

[Alex K]

Hi @Glen Hamilton ,

We implemented a stricter block list in Companion 1.2.3 to prevent Companion opening malicious executable files. Currently we are considering "xlsm", "pptm" and "docm" files as high risk. I'm going to discuss this issue with the team and will get back to you with an update on this. 

Regards,
Alex K (Developer at Atlassian)

[Simon Keary]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the update. We've also been bitten by this and this seems like a very problematic change. I understand that xslm files etc can have active code in them, so present a security concern as general files downloaded from the Internet, but this doesn't really seem to apply to Confluence (particularly local server / data center installs) where we're typically talking about files created and updated by staff within the same organisation.

While most of our Excel files are xslx, we do a range of xslm files and they need to be in this format as they have VBA code in them. Now we cannot edit them within Confluence so this is a huge problem for us. It's concerning to us that a change was knowingly made which broke the functionality we had, in an automatic update we didn't have control over, and with no obvious way for us to configure this or workaround it.

Cheers,

Simon

[Alex K]

We have reviewed this issue and will stop blocking these file types in the next version of Companion, which should be released soon. Please follow the public Jira ticket to get updates on the status of this issue: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-60519