Microsoft Virus Problem

You could try upgrading Word. I'm sure Office 2008 has crashed on me at some point, but not enough to notice or remember. Many people complained when Microsoft took VB out, but at least Office 2008 should be immune to macro viruses. In any event, hasn't there always been a flag to warn you when a document contained macros and give you the opportunity to disable them. As virsues go, Word macro viruses are just about the easiest ones to defeat.

Hi,

On this page ( http://www.symantec.com/no/no/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20071221_02), Symantec claims that Norton Antivirus 11 can eradicate macro viruses. I'd bet that the other major antivirus apps can eradicate them, too. Even though there are no reported viruses that attack OS X, your situation illustrates the advantage of running antivirus software on a Mac, especially if you are sharing and/or forwarding files to and from Windows users.

Hope this helps,

Ken

http://www.clamxav.com/

It's designed for the Mac, finds windows virus(including macros-see intro page) and it's free.

I agree, use clamXav if you feel that you need to use a AV. Don't go near Norton AV for the mac.

According to this page

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2000-121912-3335-99& tabid=3

removal of the virus is done simply by finding all infected files and deleting them. So use ClamXav to find the files, and manually delete them.

If the reason Word is crashing repeatedly is because preference files are corrupt you should be able to create a new user account on the Mac (for testing purposes), log into that account, and launch Word. If it launches successfully then it means the preferences files in your real user account are damaged.

If so, you can delete those files (I don't use MS Word on my Mac) but they are most likely located in either the Library/Preferences folder (under your home folder) or in the Library/Application Support folder (also under your home folder). Read the names carefully to be sure you are only deleting files associated with Office for Mac. If unsure, don't delete them... just drag them to a new location (move them out of your "Library/Preferences" or "Library/Application Support" folders -- that way you can just drag them back to their original location if necessary.

If it still crashes even when running under a new user account then the application itself may be corrupted. You could delete Office for Mac and re-install -- after making sure you've deleted all documents that would have contained the macro virus.

Well, since there is nothing to clean/repair on the mac OS, all you need to do is find any potential viruses and delete them before passing them on to PC users. ClamXav provides the option of moving these files to a specific folder where you can deal with it. When I run it on my home (kids') mac, I find the usuals collection of PC junk that was downloaded and a bunch of phishing emails. I just delete everything in the folder and I'm done.

I have the same problem ClamXav found multiple infected word files - but these are all important files - I just can’t delete them - what do I do to remove the “virus“ but save the documents.

Also, I use time capsule for back-up I assume there are multiple copies of the files in the back-ups as well.

what do I do to remove the “virus“ but save the documents.

Originally, Office 2008 did not include macros, but there were so many users that had legitimate and complex macros they used daily (Excel users in particular), that Microsoft relented and put them back in. So you still need to protect yourself from macro viruses.

1) Close all documents and exit Word.

2) In your user account, delete the file "Normal.dot". For Office 2008, the name is "Normal.dotm". You need to do this because once you've opened an infected document, it also infects this default template. After that, every file you save gets a copy of the macro virus attached to it.

3) Launch Word WITHOUT opening any documents! Create a new blank document. Some of your preferences are going to need to be reset now that Word has created a new template. I believe margins is one that the Normal template holds.

4) Once you have all of your settings where you want them, quit Word.

5) Go to your Normal.dot (or Normat.dotm) file again and highlight it. Press Command+I to call up the Get Info palette. Change the permissions in all fields to "Read only". Close the dialogue. This will prevent any macro viruses from writing themselves into your template.

6) Now open each infected document one at a time. If you get any message about the file wanting to load or run a macro, deny it. Open a new document and copy/paste the document text from the original file to the new blank document. Close the infected file. Save the new file by the same name as the original. Repeat for all documents you have.

7) Or, save yourself a lot of time and use a program like ClamX or Norton Anti-Virus to strip all known malware macros from your documents for you.

Could be a bit of both. You could use the "Remove Office" tool on the CD (also in the Office folder on the hard drive) to completely remove Office, then reinstall it from the CD. If you do this, make sure to first back up your Entourage data (the "Main Identity" folder) and all other documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Also be sure then to apply all available updates.

That pinpoints the problem then to their account. So it would have to be something there.

Removing one file might do it. Go to the ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ folder (in that user account) and move the file "Proofing Tools Preferences" to the desktop. Launch Word and see if the problem went away.

If not, try removing all preference files for Office. Move the entire Microsoft folder to the desktop and any .plist file that begins with com.microsoft.xxx that is clearly associated with Office.

Launch Word again and see what happens.