MS Word trying to access Internet on startup, according to Zone Alarm

  • Thread starter Thread starter BookWight
  • Start date Start date
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BookWight

the info page Zone Alarm sends me to for information says it's normal, but
it says the cause is a hyperlink in an open document, and I don't have a
Word document open when I'm booting up (that I know of).

Is there a 'normal' reason Word would access the Internet on startup?
 
the info page Zone Alarm sends me to for information says it's normal, but
it says the cause is a hyperlink in an open document, and I don't have a
Word document open when I'm booting up (that I know of).

Is there a 'normal' reason Word would access the Internet on startup?
Click to expand...

ZoneAlarm's info is only a guess at a possible cause, and you're right
to doubt it. If this is Word 2002 or 2003, the Internet access is
probably from the help subsystem.

Microsoft continually updates the help topics on its web site, which
it obviously can't do for the help topics on your drive. Word can show
you that updated content if you let it connect to the Internet. The
downside is that even on a high-speed connection it can take upwards
of 20 seconds to search the online help, where the local help responds
in under a second for the same search.

If you want to disable it, display the Help task pane and click the
link at the bottom, "Online Content Settings". In that dialog, click
"Online Content" on the left and then clear the checkbox for "Show
content and links from Microsoft Office Online".

In the same dialog, you can also click "Customer Feedback Options" and
choose whether Word sends usage information to Microsoft. Read the
privacy statement and decide whether you want to enable or disable
that function.
 
BookWight shared this with us in microsoft.public.word.newusers:
the info page Zone Alarm sends me to for information says it's
normal, but it says the cause is a hyperlink in an open document, and
I don't have a Word document open when I'm booting up (that I know
of).

Is there a 'normal' reason Word would access the Internet on startup?
Click to expand...

This is a GWF-problem. You should look it up in The Jargon File.
Smile!
;-)
 
Amedee said:
BookWight shared this with us in microsoft.public.word.newusers:


This is a GWF-problem. You should look it up in The Jargon File.
Smile!
;-)
Click to expand...

I don't think I'd go quite that far. If you don't keep up with Office
development, there's no reason to think that Word needs Internet access on
startup with a blank document, especially since there's no visible
explanation in Word itself. Earlier versions didn't behave that way.

If BookWight had insisted that it was a macro virus (as another recent
poster did, regarding Track Changes markup) then I might diagnose GWF, but
this is a perfectly reasonable question.
 
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