Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

Preventing and Controlling Word Viruses

Macro viruses have become an unfortunate fact of life for millions of Word users. Whether you are responsible for Word running on only your computer, or for an entire workgroup or organization, you need to be aware of them, and you need to take precautions to minimize the risk of becoming infected.

Macro viruses are viruses written in a Word macro language—originally WordBasic, but now Visual Basic for Applications. Like other computer viruses, they have the capability to reproduce themselves and spread to other computers that share files. And, like other computer viruses, some macro viruses are merely annoying, whereas others can cause serious data loss. Because Visual Basic for Applications can take advantage ...