Why would locking editing stop a virus or malware that is already on my device from executing?
In: Technology
It doesn’t just prevent editing. Office files can also include “macros” which are small programs that can do useful tasks within the document. The legitimate use case for macros is for things like generating complex charts based on data. But the macros can do a lot of things that could be considered malicious, too.
So when Office doesn’t trust a file it opens it in Protected Mode and refuses to let any macros run. This may not display the file properly. There is a process you can go through to open the file without protected mode. Presumably you do that after you decide you trust the file, and after you’ve had a look to verify if it has macros you do not trust.
There was a period where Office was a great way to spread viruses, because programs like Outlook would cheerfully auto-load content and execute macros. This feature’s designed to prevent that, and by default makes you jump through hoops to get out of protected mode when it knows you downloaded the file from the internet.
You can still open a bad file and get wrecked by it, but the feature means MS feels like they warned you about the possibility first.
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