PPT2000: Virus Warning Appears When Hyperlinking to Programs

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 For Windows

SYMPTOMS

When you create hyperlinks to objects or locations outside of your PowerPoint presentation, you may receive the following warning message:

Opening file: <path to file><filename>.

Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source.

Would you like to open this file?

CAUSE

The warning message described in the "Symptoms" section of this article is issued by Microsoft Office, not PowerPoint. This warning is referred to as the Open Programs warning, not the Macro Virus protection warning. It appears any time you hyperlink to an application or run a program. You will also receive this warning when you hyperlink to certain types of document files. You cannot disable this warning. Similar behavior occurs in other Microsoft Office programs that allow hyperlinks.

This feature is purposefully designed into Microsoft Office to protect you from malicious code.

WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, you can use the Run Program option rather than the Hyperlink option in the Action Settings dialog box. This will prevent the Open Programs warning from appearing in most cases.

NOTE: You can also lower the Macro Security settings inside Microsoft PowerPoint in order to reduce the frequency of the Macro Virus warning, although this procedure is not recommended unless you are absolutely sure that your macros are safe.

MORE INFORMATION

PowerPoint cannot scan your floppy disks, hard disks, or network drives to find and remove macro viruses. (If you want this kind of protection, you need to purchase and install specialized antivirus software. For more information about using antivirus software with Microsoft Office 2000, see the Microsoft Update Web site.) PowerPoint does offer the following levels of security to reduce macro virus infections:

High You can run only macros that have been digitally signed and that you confirm are from a trusted source. Before trusting a source, you should confirm that the source is responsible and uses a virus scanner before signing macros. Unsigned macros are automatically disabled, and the presentation is opened without any warning.

Medium PowerPoint displays a warning whenever it encounters a macro from a source that is not on your list of trusted sources (described below). You can choose whether to enable or disable the macros when you open the presentation. If the presentation might contain a virus, you should choose to disable macros.

Low If you are sure that all the presentations and add-ins you open are safe, you can select this option — it turns off macro virus protection in PowerPoint. At this security level, macros are always enabled when you open presentations.

If the security level for PowerPoint is set to Medium or High, you can maintain a list of trusted macro sources. When you open a presentation or load an add-in that contains macros developed by any of these sources, the macros are automatically enabled.

NOTE: When you open a design template or load an add-in that was already installed with PowerPoint 2000, macros within the file are automatically enabled. You can have PowerPoint warn about previously installed design templates and add-ins according to the level of security you have chosen.

The Office Assistant has relevant information on this issue. For more information, ask the Office Assistant the following question: How do I change Macro Security Settings?

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q168427 PPT97: No Warning When Opening PowerPoint Files From Web Pages

Additional query words: powerpnt powerpoint9 powerpoint powerpnt2k powerpnt9.0 9.0 ppt9 ppt2k ppt error dialog box messages links animation settings custom linking connect connections

Keywords : kbmacro kbvirus kbhtml
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb