With the latest security updates now out for both Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 and 2011, I wanted to ask the veterans here how safe it is to use on a Mac? I used to be under the impression that you couldn't get a computer virus using Office on a Mac, you could only send one to a Windows user, which is still not cool but made me worry less. Turns out I was completely wrong, given the fact that Pages now imports from Office and exports to Office, I'm thinking if I need the hassle of adding a potentially non secure program to my Mac, do you think my worries are overinflated?
Here is the latest security update http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-087.mspx
This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and five privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens or previews a specially crafted RTF e-mail message. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
So now if I just preview or open an email I could mess my whole Mac up? Is this true even if Office is in quit mode? I always surf the web on a non Admin account, would this completely protect me or just partially?
Could somebody writing college papers where one would need to import and export many things into Word, could they get by using Pages or is its export ability still unreliable?
If you uninstalled Office for Mac, you wouldn't lose your documents correct? They would just open in Pages?
If I decide to keep Office for Mac 2011, can I just uninstall Office for Mac 2008 without a hitch?
Thanks for your time and help.
Here is the latest security update http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-087.mspx
This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and five privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens or previews a specially crafted RTF e-mail message. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
So now if I just preview or open an email I could mess my whole Mac up? Is this true even if Office is in quit mode? I always surf the web on a non Admin account, would this completely protect me or just partially?
Could somebody writing college papers where one would need to import and export many things into Word, could they get by using Pages or is its export ability still unreliable?
If you uninstalled Office for Mac, you wouldn't lose your documents correct? They would just open in Pages?
If I decide to keep Office for Mac 2011, can I just uninstall Office for Mac 2008 without a hitch?
Thanks for your time and help.
