You can use Office 2000 and an antivirus software package to protect your documents from macro viruses.

A macro virus is made up of harmful code written in the macro language of programs. These viruses can do serious harm to programs and data. Without proper precautions, macro viruses can be transmitted to your computer. For example, the macro viruses can get stored in your Normal template or a global template. From that point on, every document you open could be automatically infected with the macro virus.

How Office 2000 works with virus scanning programs

If the virus scanning program installed on your computer supports Office 2000, you can check files for macro viruses. When you open a document in Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000, and Microsoft PowerPoint® 2000, the document is checked by the virus scanning program before it is opened in the Office program.

Virus scanning programs that support Office 2000 are registered on your computer when the programs are installed. This registration enables Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to determine how to pass the documents through the scanning program before the documents are opened.

How to verify whether your virus scanning program supports Office 2000

Not all virus scanning programs support Office 2000. You can verify whether a virus scanning program is registered on your computer by opening the Security dialog box in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

To see if a virus scanning program is registered

• On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Security.

If no virus scanning program is registered to scan Office documents, the Security dialog box indicates No virus scanners installed. If a virus scanning program is not registered on your computer, you may want to discuss this issue with your administrator.

More information

To learn more about virus protection, read Protect your Office data from viruses on the Microsoft Office Online Web site.

For more information about how you can protect documents from macro viruses, type virus or protect documents in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Help window, and then click Search.