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PowerPoint 2003 Security and Privacy - Increase or Decrease PowerPoint 2003's Macro Protection

SUMMARY: Help secure PowerPoint 2003 from malicious documents.

Using Microsoft PowerPoint 2003's macro coding language, unscrupulous document creators can create macro viruses that can potentially damage your machine's operating system and/or data. While virus scanners are constantly adding definitions to known macro viruses, they may not catch every single macro virus out in the wild. Thus, PowerPoint 2003 has some security against macro viruses, at the potential cost of not being able to correctly display certain slide shows using macros.

To view and/or change your PowerPoint 2003 macro security settings:

1. Click "Tools" - "Macro" - "Security".

2. When the "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the "Security" tab.

3. Click "Macro Security".

4. When the "Security" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the "Security Level" tab to choose your level of macro virus security.

5. If you choose "High" or "Very High" security, you may wish to click the "Trusted Publishers" tab. Here, you scan through macro publishers, if any are visible, that you have already trusted to create non-malicious scripts.

6. Click "OK" on the two opened dialog boxes to close.

Note that increasing this level DOES NOT mean that you should go without virus protection software! It is strongly recommended to continue using anti-virus software as it may detect problems PowerPoint 2003 cannot.