Abstract. Effects of current annealing on magnetic hysteresis properties and magnetoimpedance (MI) of glass-coated amorphous microwires with nominal composition of Co71Fe5B11Si10Cr3 and small positive magnetostriction were investigated with the purpose to control the magnetic anisotropy. We have demonstrated that current annealing can produce a controllable change in the easy anisotropy direction from almost axial to circular, depending on the annealing time. The induced magnetization configuration is very sensitive to the applied tensile stress. The combination of positive magnetostriction and helical anisotropy makes it possible to realise large stress-magnetoimpedance (S-MI) effect without use of any dc bias fields owing to the directional change in magnetization. This is especially important for microwave frequency S-MI effect and can be very interesting for developing stress-sensors operating at the high frequency region.