Security Alert - Office File Validation (received after accepting changes in document)

I'm having an odd problem and hoping someone can help.

I'm running Word 2007 on Windows 8. I was using track changes while editing a lengthy document. Once I finished editing, I saved a copy of the document and did an Accept > Accept All Changes in Document. I saved the file in Compatibility Mode (Word 97-2003) which was the original format.

When I went to open the file (still on my machine) I received the following security alert:

Microsoft Office Security Notice

Security Alert - Office File Validation

Warning: Office file validation detected a problem while trying to open this file.

Opening this is probably dangerous, and may allow a malicious user to take over your computer.

This ONLY happened when I accepted all changes. If I saved a copy without accepting all of the changes, I did not get the security alert. Through trial and error, I discovered that it was one deletion in particular that was causing the problem. As long as I did not accept that one particular change, I could accept every other change in the document and it would open without the alert.

Does anyone know what might be behind this? Is there really something in the file that is dangerous? I'm at the point where I'm scared to send any Word documents to clients and coworkers in case they really are dangerous/something on my computer is making them unsafe. So far, the issue only seems to affect this one file but, unfortunately, it's a file I do need to send out at some point.

(I did scan the file with my AV program and it didn't find any issues)

Any feedback would be GREATLY appreciated.

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Jay Freedman

The alert is a false positive. There is nothing dangerous. However, you shouldn't send that file to anyone else, because they'll probably see the alert and think you have a virus on your computer.

Create a new blank document, based on the same template as the problem file. Copy everything before the "bad" change and paste it into the blank document, and then do the same with everything after the "bad" change. Just type in the text of the changed item as it should be seen. You should get a clean save; then discard the original document.

The alert appears because the content of the file (including the text and all the "metadata" that describes it) doesn't match the checksum that Word writes into the file. The assumption is that the mismatch was caused by a hacker or virus inserting malicious code into the file after it was saved -- but that isn't necessarily true, and in this case it's false.

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RoaneR

The alert is a false positive. There is nothing dangerous. However, you shouldn't send that file to anyone else, because they'll probably see the alert and think you have a virus on your computer.

Create a new blank document, based on the same template as the problem file. Copy everything before the "bad" change and paste it into the blank document, and then do the same with everything after the "bad" change. Just type in the text of the changed item as it should be seen. You should get a clean save; then discard the original document.

The alert appears because the content of the file (including the text and all the "metadata" that describes it) doesn't match the checksum that Word writes into the file. The assumption is that the mismatch was caused by a hacker or virus inserting malicious code into the file after it was saved -- but that isn't necessarily true, and in this case it's false.

Thank you SO much for the reply! This is a huge relief!

I tried upgrading to Word 2013 hoping that would solve the issue and, when it didn't, I had one tech support agent tell me it might be malware and another tech support agent tell me it was just a sort of glitch and that there was no indication that anything malicious was affecting my files. SO glad I posted here, as well, because neither mentioned anything about false positives.

If anyone else is having this issue, I did find that changing the file format from doc to the most recent format also solved the problem.

Security Alert - Office File Validation (received after accepting changes in document)

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