It's a feature that applies itself in the wrong situations = a bug.

I recognize Microsoft felt it necessary to implement a security shield to protect against malware, but with a little more effort it should be able to distinguish between a user-initiated e-mail merge and any other auto e-mail attempt. It may require a little bit more thinking to do so without creating an exploitable hole in the security shield. At least an open-minded programmer could figure out a "Microsoft" solution. If not, maybe they could add an option on the pop-up box to bypass the warnings for a time period or something.

I believe you are correct, though, MS is unlikely to fix it. Even if they got over themselves and acknowledged their 'feature' caused a bug that impaired another feature, they have bigger fish to fry, and seem to be satisfied making users rely on 3rd-party developers to work around the broken features they don't think people use. Really, the existence of the 3rd-party workaround tool, and its popularity should be evidence that their product doesn't measure up. Such a world-class software company should be able to spare one developer enough time to address a simple issue like this, so I'm still disappointed. But I've wasted enough of your time. I'll be content with the complaints I've posted here, hoping they might make some difference at some point, and go on my way. Thanks for pointing out the 3rd-party tool again.

-Joe