Technical Note for Users of Microsoft Office 2000

This is a note for users of Office 2000 who wish to make use of the Letter Generator in Control Centre v3.1.0.

The Letter Generator in Control Centre makes use of small programs built into Microsoft Word documents, known as macros, to automate the letter generation process. In recent months, malicious documents have been spread, primarily via the Internet, which have used these macros to transmit viruses. To counteract this threat, Microsoft has upgraded the security features within Office 2000 so that by default Word 2000 will automatically disable any macros that have not been authorised as being safe.

Macros can be authorised as being safe by giving them a unique digital signature that Word 2000 can check before opening a document. At present, Sage (UK) is in the process of applying for the right to use these signatures in our macros, but in the meantime Word 2000 may see them as a potential risk and disable them, thus interfering with automatic letter generation. Microsoft Word 2000 can, however, be reconfigured so that instead of automatically disabling unsigned macros, it will ask the user whether or not an unsigned macro should be run.

So, if you wish to make use of the Letter Generator in Control Centre v3.1.0, you must first reconfigure Word 2000 by turning the Security Level down from High to Medium as follows:

From the "Tools" menu in Word 2000, select "Security;" from the "Macro" submenu. If the "Macro" menu option is not visible, first click on the double arrow at the bottom of the "Tools" menu.

Choose the "Medium" option on the "Security Level" page and select "OK".

In future, when you attempt to generate a letter from Control Centre, Word 2000 will display a dialog box asking if you wish to enable macros – select the "Enable Macros" button to proceed.

Please note that this dialog box will be displayed every time you try to open a Word document containing a macro – if you are in any doubt as to whether the document you are opening contains a virus, select the "Disable Macros" button.

For more information on macros and security in Word 2000, please refer to the Microsoft Word 2000 Help topic "Protection from documents that might contain viruses".