Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications remove macros

customer brought in an imac and a pile of flash drives and is freaking out that there's a virus on their computer.

I've found that many of the excel and word docs on the flash drive pop up the warning that there are macros in the document and what to do. I've been always disabling, but I'd like to just REMOVE anything that is a macro from any files on their computer and flash drives.

I'd also like to know if there's any way to disable all macros in word/excel. (2004, vers 110) From what I've read, MS in their infinite wisdom, do not give this option except to pop an annoyabox every time you open a file with a macro in it and click Disable, each and every time, forever. It also seems to pop this box if there ever was a macro in the file that has since been deleted.

I was hoping to find something on versiontracker to just run a folder or computer and strip all macros off all .doc and .xls, but no luck. This user doesn't use macros and does not receive any documents that should have them in it. Ideally I'd like to disable macro functionality in their office entirely.

Also I have opened these docs, opened the vb editor, then opened the macros box and it does not show any macros or any modules. I believe this is one of those where if it ever had a macro it shows up as having macros? Or is there a hidden macro? I've opened an xls I know has a macro in it and it's easily visible there in a module. Not every one pops that message. I also made a new document and opened / edited/saved/closed it several times and it never gives the warning so I am fairly sure the .Normal is ok.

You're right, there's no way to universally disable macro support in Office 2004. The only solutions would be to live with the warnings or to upgrade to 2008 which doesn't support macros. Interestingly, in Office 2007 for Windows you can now disable macros altogether (in 2003 you could only disable untrusted macros).

That said, if your client is that worried, why not install antivirus?

As for why these docs don't appear to have macros, but say they do, I'm not sure. I just tested here: Created a new doc, added a macro, saved. When I opened it, it warned me about the macro. I then deleted the macro, saved again. Next time I opened it, no more warning. So if your Normal.dot is clean, I'm not sure why you're getting that result...