Word macro viruses are dangerous PC viruses that distribute themselves by means of Microsoft Word macro programming language. The macro viruses can corrupt Word applications and also other Windows programs and scripts using programming languages. If you have a Word macro virus on your computer, you can pass it by chance to other people via e-mail, on a CD, floppy disk. The Word Macro viruses are written in the WordBasic macro language to corrupt Microsoft Word files and templates. What is more impressive is the fact that these viruses are catching for all operating systems: they will infect document files on Mac OS, Unix, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows XP operating systems. Macro viruses use a set of features from Microsoft Word to execute infected macro code. The virus will immediately affect the user's normal.dot template after you open the infected file. What does normal.dot template stand for? Normal.dot is the key component for many other document files. It is available to all Word templates on your system. The virus infects the normal.dot file, subsequently it spreads itself in other files and templates after you open them. The matter is that when you start Microsoft Word application, the normal.dot template is the first one to load. Now the virus is activated and it will be loaded every time you double-click on any Word application. Macro viruses are programmed to make Word files be saved as templates, disregarding real file extensions of those documents. Word macro viruses can't be saved in ordinary files with .doc extensions. The templates are having infected macro code and are used as virus body carriers. After the virus has taken control over your system, it is able to: - Create various pop-up windows with stupid jokes, slang words and profanity - Automatically generate spam e-mail messages using the victim's contact list - Mix the contents of different Word files by means of adding some parts of text from one document to another - Generate multiple redirects from one document to another creating chaos in your records Those who have a professional antivirus program installed, such as McAfee VirusScan 2006, Norton AntiVirus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal, word macro viruses are not a great threat. Some of the mentioned antivirus programs completely destroy the viruses and the affected documents won't load until the virus is neutralized, while viruses can also avoid computers with some antivirus program installed. If your computer was infected and you know the name of the virus, you can visit the online CIAC Virus Database and find out about the ways you should deal with that virus. The database has gathered materials about small computer viruses and Trojan horses. The main aim of the developers is to help you identify the computer viruses for PC and Mac OS and provide you with detailed information about the consequences of infection by one or another virus. The database is of course renewed several times a year, depending on the number of new viruses that appear.