Have you ever found your word or excel files corrupted or lost? You become unable to open or edit those files. You cannot detect why this happened to your files, and why are you unable to use them? That is because it is difficult to know the cause. Excel, Word, or PowerPoint files get corrupted because of a virus called “MACRO VIRUS”.
Take a chill if you do not know what is a micro virus? How you get it and remove it? Because we are going to provide you all this knowledge about the Macro virus in this article.
What is a Macro Virus?
Macro Virus Definition:
Macro virus is a type of computer virus that corrupts a software program and performs some actions while the software is running. It usually affects word processors like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. It is a sequence of commands that transfers from one file to another.
Macro viruses are written in Macro language and are visually basic for application. You commonly receive these viruses through email documents and when you download, click or open that file, the virus infects your network and harms other documents as well. There are some common ways of spreading the macro virus in the computer, we list some of them below:
- Spam emails having attachments.
- Sharing files via disk or network.
- Downloading files from the untrusted resource on the internet.
Macro Virus Examples
Some Macro Virus examples are:
- Melissa: It infects local hard drives and memory.
- Marker: A virus generally known as the Word virus, keeps a record of the victims and forwards it to the hacker.
How to Tell if You Have a Macro Virus?
Before doing something for removing the macro virus, the first and important phase is how to know that this virus is infecting your system? So, some signs warn you about the macro virus.
These symptoms are:
- You get awkward messages and prompts alerts.
- Your document does not save as their actual extension, but as a template file.
- Your files automatically get password-protected, even if you have not done it.
- Your system lags and becomes slower than usual.
- Your word menus will be lost.
How to Remove Macro Virus from Excel or Word?
There are several methods of removing the macro virus from excellence or word file, some are through the system and some are manual.
Removing Macro Virus Using System Software: Using Antivirus
There is a lot of antivirus available that can detect any virus. So, deep scanning your system with trustable security software can remove the macro virus.
Once you remove the virus through this method, your Office might stop or cause trouble in working. So, you can repair the office by following the repairing steps mentioned by the office or reinstall it.
Removing Macro Virus Manually in MS Word or Excel
Method#01
There are very simple steps to make your word document free from Macro virus, these steps are:
Step 01: Run the word document in safe mode by pressing the shift key while selecting it. This will restrict the macro virus commands from running.
Step 02: Go to the Support section of Microsoft and follow the given steps.
Method#02
Step 01: Go to View
Step 02: Choose “Macros,” then “Organizer”
Step 03: Select the file infected by the virus and delete it.
Method#03
Step 01: Open “task manager” and check out if there is any suspicious program running.
Step 02: Install “Autorun”, this will help you to detect the program that autoruns and their location.
Step 03: Reboot your system in safe mode
Step 04: Run the Autorun.exe file and uncheck the boxes of “Hide Empty Locations” and “Hide Windows Entries” in the Options menu at the top.
Step 05: Go to the location of the unknown program and delete it from the autorun list and the location.
Step 06: Once you are done with all these steps, then restart your PC.
Macro Virus Removal Tools
Manually process of getting rid of the macro virus can be difficult, so it is better to use antivirus or anti-malware tools that will facilitate you to remove it with ease.
Moreover, when you use any tool for macro virus removal, there are fewer chances of any other blunder, like when you do it manually it can affect your office installation. So, we are going to list down some tools that you can use whenever you got some virus in your system.
- Malwarebytes
- Sophos Antivirus tools
- Avast Free antivirus
- AVG antivirus
- SpyBot
Macro Virus Prevention
Prevention is better than cure. So, thinking about what will happen if the macro virus attacks our computer, it is better to think about how to protect your systems from it.
You should follow these good practices to prevent your PC from viruses:
- Keep your system up to date. Your computer notifies you after some days or a month about updates, these updates include prevention against the latest virus and other threats. It is necessary to upgrade the system from time to time.
- Again, updating the operating system is also as important as PC. Keep it upgraded too.
- Your system must contain reliable antivirus software and its notification. Deep scan and clean your system whenever you find any of the symptoms of the macro virus.
Conclusion
Nowadays the professional way of communicating to any company or client is through email and it is very much in use, hence it also has a threat to infect your system with malicious files.
So, before clicking on any link, starting any download, or opening any file, make sure that is from a trusted source. In case you run a malware program, then follow the methods discussed to remove it.
Also, Read Types of Computer Viruses
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