WLACS Tech Blog

A client of ours recently brought in an Apple iMac running Microsoft Word 2004. He started having a problem where recipients of Word files he created were blocking the attachment due to a possible “virus infection”.

When going to Tools > Macros in Microsoft Word 2004, the following list of macros was displayed:


AddToolbar
DeleteTheFile
Main
popSaveAsDialog
reloadDoc
startMail
startPring


Immediately, we recognized that these were common actions used by third-party applications. We also noticed an Adobe Acrobat toolbar underneath the standard editing toolbar.

Attempting to remove the macros by choosing the “delete” option is impossible since they are created from a template file upon start-up. To successfully remove the macros without removing Adobe Acrobat altogether, perform the following steps:

1. Quit Microsoft Word
2. Open a new Finder window
3. Navigate to your Startup Volume
4. Open the “Applications” folder
5. Open the Microsoft Office 2004 (or X) folder
6. Open the “Office” folder
7. Open the “Startup” folder
8. Open the “Word” folder
9. Delete the “PDFMaker.dot” file
10. Relaunch Microsoft Word

You’ll notice that the Adobe Acrobat toolbar is now gone. If you navigate to Tools > Macros, you’ll also notice that the macros are gone as well.

Hope this helps!