VBA is a powerful programming language that can be used to create applications that work within Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, virus programmers have embraced it as a perfect programming and distribution environment for creating and spreading their dirty deeds. One of the benefits of Word's macro featurefrom the programmer and user points of viewis that macros are stored in template files. This makes them easy to distribute. Send someone a Word file that contains a macro and that person can use the macro on his computer. He can even copy the macro to other templates and share them with others. It's this feature that also makes macros dangerous to users. Opening a Word file that contains a malicious macroone designed to do something annoying or damagingcan trigger its functions. Macros like this are known as macro viruses. One particularly widespread example of a Word Macro virus appeared in March 2002. Dubbed "Melissa," it spread in a Word file that, once opened, sent e-mail messages to the first 50 people in the user's Outlook address book. The e-mail message included the infected file as an attachment, thus spreading the virus to other users. Fortunately, the folks at Microsoft have developed a strategy for protecting Word users from unsuspectingly opening a Word file that includes a macro virus. In this part of the chapter, I explain how you enable macro virus protection and how you can use it to protect your computer from macro viruses. Tips
To enable macro virus protection
Tips
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