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The Office Of Information Technology (OIT) Virus Notification Program

The Office Of Information Technology (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. There is, however, a simple way of gaining some protection from them. You can change your general settings so that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will prompt you before running any macros in any document you open. Here are instructions for setting macro protection in these programs:

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

  • Choose Tools from the Menu Bar
  • Choose Macro
  • Choose Security
  • Make sure security is set to High or Medium

Instructions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2003:

  • Choose Tools from the Menu Bar
  • Choose Options
  • Click the Security tab
  • Click on the Macro Security button
  • Make sure security is set to High or Medium

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 these patches from our macro security flaw web page.

Instructions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Office 2007:

  • Click the Office button
  • Click the Word Options button
  • Choose Trust Center in the Option list
  • Click on the Trust Center Settings button
  • Choose Macro Settings
  • Select either the first or second selection under Macro Settings

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 Virus Notification Program FAQ.

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