Since it was introduced in your Windows Office suite, Word has become the most widely used and famous text editor in the world. There are millions of documents created and sent over the network, but today these text files are used by hackers to send viruses. For this reason, we want to teach you how to open a Word document without the risk of being infected by a virus.
This is so because many of these text files created in Word can reach the mail and when you open them they contain a virus.
We have always recommended to be vigilant and avoid, by all means, leaving a gap where a malicious program can enter.
And increase security as much as possible when we download or receive text files. Since we will not only show you articles on how to create or customize new text styles but also how we can protect them.
How to open a Word document without risk of being infected by a virus
Everything you can do to keep the security fence as protected as possible is highly recommended and it will never hurt to apply certain tips to keep you safe. This so that you can avoid any contagion when opening a document that is created with Microsoft Word.
One of the most common ways in which a Word document is usually opened, when the source is unknown, is in Protected View.
You will know that the document has been opened in this way because a message will appear in the upper bar to edit the document and it will be with a yellow background.
As long as we do not enable the editing option, we do not run any risk and we will be able to see the content of the document without major problems.
The problem begins when we click on the Enable option since this decision would put our computer at risk since we would give permission to the execution and installation of some malware.
Recommendations to open a Word document without risk of being infected by a virus
So we can only enable the editing of this document, only if we really know where it comes from. That is, be sure that it comes from a reliable source.
Sometimes it is possible that this option is not activated and the document is not opened in Protected View mode, so we must make certain adjustments in the configuration.
Doing this is very simple, we open a document in Word, then we go to the File tab in the main menu. Then we choose Options and in the window that appears to us, on its left side we select Trust Center. In the lower right part, the Trust Center Configuration option will be displayed, on which we are going to click.
A new window will be displayed and on its left side we will select the Protected View option, now on the right side, we will see three boxes which we will select to enable the protected view when we receive documents from the Internet, from Outlook or potentially unsafe.
We can also disable the macro and this procedure can be done in the same way, we go to a Word document and click on the File tab, then Options and then Trust Center.
We will then go on to select Trust Center Settings, then Macro Settings. And only the Disable all macro with notifications box should be checked.
Another recommendation that we can give you is to always keep Microsoft Office updated and thus have the latest versions installed on our computer.
If possible you should open your Word documents, using other applications such as Google Docs or Office Online. In this way, we were able to show you how to open a Word document without the risk of being infected by a virus.