Microsoft 365 Alert – Service Degradation – SharePoint Online – Some users incorrectly receive a security warning prompt when opening Excel or PowerPoint files in SharePoint Online – RESOLVED

15/08/2024 10:05:00 AM

NHSmail Reference: INC45059685

Microsoft Reference: SP861520/SP867513

Issue Status: RESOLVED

Issue Description: Some users incorrectly receive a security warning prompt when opening Excel or PowerPoint files in SharePoint Online.

More info: More specifically, users may incorrectly receive a security prompt when opening Word, Excel or PowerPoint files in their respective web apps within SharePoint Online. Also, affected users may see the following message “This content presents a potential issue”.

While they are working to remediate impact, we recommend that users update their Microsoft 365 Office clients by accessing an application and selecting the following options:

File > Account > Microsoft 365 and Office Updates > Update Options > Update Now

Final Update: 04/10/2024 08:59:00 AM – Following their extensive service monitoring, Microsoft have confirmed that their fix deployment has remediated impact for a majority of users. For users that may continue to experience impact, updating the Microsoft 365 Office client has been confirmed to remediate the impact, the steps of which have been outlined in the More info statement of this communication.

Scope of impact: Impact is specific to some users who are served through infrastructure operating with the Semi-Annual Channel update from January 2024 – 16.0.17328.20452 attempting to open Word, Excel or PowerPoint files in their respective SharePoint Online web app.

Root cause: A necessary short-term fix for an unrelated issue was recently implemented, producing a security warning prompt when opening Excel, PowerPoint, or Word files in SharePoint Online.

Next steps: Microsoft are further analyzing the offending short-term fix that resulted in impact to help us isolate similar issues during their pre-deployment testing and validation processes.