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The OIT Virus Notification Program

Virus Security for Microsoft Office

Macro viruses transmitted in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents are becoming more and more common, but there is a simple way of gaining some protection from them. You can change your general settings so that Word and Excel will prompt you before running any macros in any document you open. Here are the instructions for setting macro protection in these programs:

Instructions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 98:

• Choose Tools from the menu bar.
• Choose Preferences.
• Choose General.
• Place a checkmark next to the box marked Macro virus protection.

Instructions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2001:

• Choose Edit from the menu bar.
• Choose Preferences.
• Choose General.
• Place a checkmark next to the box marked Macro virus protection.

In June 2001 and October 2001, security flaws in the macro security for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were discovered. These flaws would allow specially malformed macro code to bypass the macro security settings and execute the macro without the knowledge or permission of the user. There are patches available that will fix the flaws for the individual office programs. You can get this patches from our macro security flaw web page.

Microsoft Word 2001, Excel 2001, and PowerPoint 2001 are also vulnerable to an attack from specially modified HTML files saved as Office documents. Although this security weakness has not yet been exploited by hackers, it is best to change your settings so that you are alerted when Word, Excel, or PowerPoint tries to open and convert one of these files.

• Choose Tools from the menu bar. Then choose Options.
• A window with several tabs will appear. Click on the General tab.
• Place a checkmark next to the box Confirm conversion at Open.
• Click Ok.

To learn how to sign up to receive alerts via e-mail about any new viruses that threaten the university, click on the Virus Notification Page.

To return to the main VNP web page, click on the the Virus Notification Program FAQ.