Virus Questions and Answers - Norton Virus Scan Slowing Down Opening Files in Word

Jim writes in with a virus question
Question:I have got Norton Anti-virus 2010 and installed it in my computer. I have Windows Vista and did have an earlier edition of Norton Anti-virus before I upgraded, but since I got 2010, it seems that every time I open up Microsoft Word, whether it is a new or saved document, it will take forever to open and it always says on the bottom that it runs a virus scan. It also takes forever for it to close. Why is this happening this way and is there a setting that I can set so Word opens and closes faster? Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer: Norton Antivirus has an Office plug-in that allows it to scan Office documents when you open them. You can disable this feature if it's causing problems but keep in mind that it won’t scan Office documents when you open them. If you don't have any documents that you may have to worry about then disabling the feature should work fine. Here is how you do it.

1. Click on the Start, All Programs and then Norton Antivirus to open the program.
2. Click Settings.
3. Under Computer Scans, click on the icon next to Microsoft Office Automatic Scan to toggle the setting between the On setting and the Off setting.
4. Click OK.

OR

1. On the taskbar, right click the Norton icon, and then click Settings.
2. Under Computer Scans, click on the icon next to Microsoft Office Automatic Scan to toggle the setting between the On setting and the Off setting.
3. Click OK.

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