Office 97 susceptible to viruses?

Anti-virus vendors, angered that Microsoft did not work closely with themduring the development of Office 97, are claiming that the new suite issusceptible to virus infection because of the new file formats used bymany of the applications. Microsoft did not release a software development kit for the suite until it was introduced to the public. "It's a dangerous time," says Alex Haddox, a product manager at Symantec Corp., makers of Norton AntiVirus.Microsoft includes code in Office 97 that detects and disables ten commonmacro viruses--viruses that attack the system through an application program's programmable interfaces. Tim Lebel, one of Microsoft's many product managers for Office, admits that Microsoft should have worked with anti-virus vendors earlier. Currently, IBM, Symantec, MacAfee, and Dr. Solomons are all working onOffice 97-compatible virus scanners