Word documents are turned into Visual Basic documents automaticall

I frequently have a problem in working with Word documents which suddenly become Visual Basic format documents. It happens mostly in documents with a table or a macro such as my letterhead. A screen pops up and suggests that I "debug" the document. A yellow-highlighted link appears. When I hit "debug". nothing happens. Sometimes I can work in the document, but it is still in the corrupted format. If I hit "End", most of the time the Word application crashes. If I try to email the document as an attachment, the receiver's virus software says that the virus "W97M.Panther" was in the attachment.

I would love to disable Visual Basic if at all possible. Failing that, is there some way I can stop this from happening?

Hi Kathy,

Visual Basic isn't the problem. The problem here is there are macros running or attempting to run and they contain errors. That is why you are encountering the Debug messages.

You could change your Macro security to High and turn off trusted sources but that will not solve the underlying problem and it sounds like that problem is a macro virus.

Update your virus scanner and perform a full scan and see if that rectifies the problem.

--
Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup. Email requests for assistance can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~
Beth Melton

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/


"KathyM1044" wrote:

I frequently have a problem in working with Word documents which suddenly become Visual Basic format documents. It happens mostly in documents with a table or a macro such as my letterhead. A screen pops up and suggests that I "debug" the document. A yellow-highlighted link appears. When I hit "debug". nothing happens. Sometimes I can work in the document, but it is still in the corrupted format. If I hit "End", most of the time the Word application crashes. If I try to email the document as an attachment, the receiver's virus software says that the virus "W97M.Panther" was in the attachment.

I would love to disable Visual Basic if at all possible. Failing that, is there some way I can stop this from happening?

Thanks so much! I did the virus scan and also reinstalled Microsoft Office since it didn't work after the scan. Now it all seems to work perfectly.

"Beth Melton" wrote:

Hi Kathy,

Visual Basic isn't the problem. The problem here is there are macros running or attempting to run and they contain errors. That is why you are encountering the Debug messages.

You could change your Macro security to High and turn off trusted sources but that will not solve the underlying problem and it sounds like that problem is a macro virus.

Update your virus scanner and perform a full scan and see if that rectifies the problem.

--
Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup. Email requests for assistance can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~
Beth Melton

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/


"KathyM1044" wrote:

I frequently have a problem in working with Word documents which suddenly become Visual Basic format documents. It happens mostly in documents with a table or a macro such as my letterhead. A screen pops up and suggests that I "debug" the document. A yellow-highlighted link appears. When I hit "debug". nothing happens. Sometimes I can work in the document, but it is still in the corrupted format. If I hit "End", most of the time the Word application crashes. If I try to email the document as an attachment, the receiver's virus software says that the virus "W97M.Panther" was in the attachment.

I would love to disable Visual Basic if at all possible. Failing that, is there some way I can stop this from happening?