What are “macro viruses” and what do they have to do with Microsoft Word?
A. Microsoft Word documents (.DOC files) can contain viruses. These are known as “macro viruses” because they are written in Word’s macro programming language. There are legitimate needs for macros in Word, such as for adding keyboard shortcuts, but most people never use that feature. Therefore, most Word documents containing macros are really infected with a virus (over 90% of known viruses are MS-Word macro viruses as opposed to kinds that infect EXE files).
