Malware alert on Excel attachment to Apple Mail

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Malware alert on Excel attachment to Apple Mail

I've been using Excel 2011 for many years on my MBPro and on my iMac. This morning I sent an Excel spreadsheet to a friend and he sent me back an email that my attachment has a malware alert.

This is the message his return email had:

Malware was detected in one or more attachments included with this email message.

Action: All attachments have been removed.

ATT00003 Malicious Payload

He is in a very secure environment and I'm sure their system scans for malware on all incoming email attachments.

What can i do to ensure that my iMac has not been infected with Malware? I've never seen this before. Any suggestions?

Veehbj

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2), 3.5 GHz i5, 8 GB, 1 TB Fusion

Posted on Apr 11, 2018 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

KiltedTim

Level 10

195,573 points

Apr 11, 2018 7:38 AM in response to veehbJ

It's extremely unlikely that your Mac is infected with anything that could affect an Excel file. If you created the file to begin with, it's much more likely that the alert the recipient is getting is a false positive.

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Answer 2

veehbJ Author

Level 1

55 points

Apr 11, 2018 8:27 AM in response to veehbJ

Thanks KiltedTim,

I sent the email to three other recipients and none of them had this message. Maybe this particular recipient had upped their testing for malware and hopefully it was a false positive.

This is an excel file that I created on my iMac and that I've been using now for over a week, with updates every few days. So I don't think the Excel spreadsheet is infected.

Not sure how to communicate with this friend, as he needs the data that is in the spreadsheet. Maybe I could copy it to a Word Document and sent it to him. Mail doesn't preserve the format information when you copy and past a spreadsheet into it.

I appreciate your prompt reply to my inquiry.

Veehbj

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Answer 3

veehbJ Author

Level 1

55 points

Apr 27, 2018 10:33 PM in response to veehbJ

The recipient said their company was a little overboard on security and they released the spreadsheet.

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Malware alert on Excel attachment to Apple Mail

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