is it a virus or hardware?

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hello. i have a client who is a law attorney. she opened up one word file, and POW...it seemed every word file she had opened one after another, then a mac window popped up saying "microsoft word needs to download the font 'osaka'." she did not click on the "download" choice.

she closed all the files and say things are working fine now.

virus? software? hardware? i think that narrows it down :). what would be the workflow for this repair, pls?

thanks!
berbes
 

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Hi berbes. Nice to hear from you.

First off, it's not a virus as none exist in the wild for Macs; nor do they behave in this way.

As "things are working fine now", there is even less to worry about.

May I suggest two things:

1. Download Malwarebytes app from https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/ and by all means accept the 30 day free trial, but don't pay now or after as the standalone version is free. Install in the usual way and run it. It will detect and remove any malware which could have been involved.

2. Download OnyX from https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html. Vital that you select the version specific to your operating system. Install, and run the app, choosing the Automation tab and using the defaults.

This will check your system and repair any issues.

These two suggestions, frequently endorsed & recommended on these Forums are for your peace of mind.

No further action is likely to be needed.

Ian
 

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With Preview, if you open up a bunch of PDFs and images and then don't close them manually but just quit the application with CMD+q, the next time you open Preview, it will re-open all the previously opened files. I wonder if Word is doing something similar.
 
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Is there any chance she inadvertently selected a whole bunch of files and clicked open? I have done that before and while it is fun to watch them all popping open it is annoying.

Also unless she has a document written in Japanese, I would wonder about the request to download osaka. That alone would make me follow Ian's excellent advice just to be safe.

Lisa
 
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what GREAT ideas and questions. i will definitely follow thru on your suggestions, ian, lisa (i just did that myself!) and of course, razor.

onward!
 
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then a mac window popped up saying "microsoft word needs to download the font 'osaka'.

The 'osaka' font is a normal Mac OS X installed font, but in the usual System/Fonts folder.

I'm not sure how MS Word accesses it rather than its own font library.


EDIT:
Interesting:
When opening one of my documents in Word 2011 on MacOS 10.12.3, I'm asked to download a series of fonts including: STHeiti and Osaka.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...word-docs-im-asked-to-download-stheiti-and-ot

Also:
Fonts available for download in macOS Sierra
To download and enable any of these fonts: (osaka font is included)
Open Font Book from your Applications folder.
Select the font to download. Fonts available for download appear dimmed in the list of fonts.
Click the Download button in the upper-right corner of the window, or choose Edit > Download.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/ht206872

Hmmm… learn something new every day…




- Patrick
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The Osaka font is a mixture of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanjii for the Japanese language and has been included with macOS for some time. The STHeiti font is for the Chinese language. The Osaka font is included in the Microsoft font folder but not the STHeiti. However, there are numerous other Asian fonts included which are probably used instead when switching languages in MS Office.
 
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hello. i have a client who is a law attorney. she opened up one word file, and POW...it seemed every word file she had opened one after another, then a mac window popped up saying "microsoft word needs to download the font 'osaka'." she did not click on the "download" choice.

she closed all the files and say things are working fine now.

virus? software? hardware? i think that narrows it down :). what would be the workflow for this repair, pls?

thanks!
berbes

I started having the same problem. I followed the advice to use Font Book to download the relevant fonts (Osaka, ST Kaiti and ST Heiti. Since then, Word has stopped generating those error-messages.
 
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hello. i have a client who is a law attorney. she opened up one word file, and POW...it seemed every word file she had opened one after another, then a mac window popped up saying "microsoft word needs to download the font 'osaka'." she did not click on the "download" choice.

Well, I'm also an attorney, and a very heavy user of Word. The overwhelming majority of attorneys use Word just about all day, every day.

You've been told that there are "no viruses for the Mac" in this thread. Assuming that one is using "virus" to mean "malware", which is how most of the world defines it, then that is patently false and I wish that folks who should know better would stop saying that. At minimum, it is a misleading statement. There is definitely malware for the Macintosh. It may not technically be a virus, because it does not self-replicate, and it may be incredibly uncommon, but malware for the Macintosh does exist.

Microsoft Word is a special target. Because most versions of Word include Visual Basic for macros, "Word macro viruses" used to be wildly common. What you described sounds typical of the type of havoc that a Word macro virus used to cause. Your client may have encountered one.

Why aren't they wildly common anymore? It's not because they have been stamped out. It's because Word has what is known as "Macro Virus Protection" built-in. But...it doesn't work unless it is turned on AND the warnings it sends out are heeded.

To make sure that it is turned on, go to:
In Word:
Word menu --> Preferences --> Security & Privacy --> select: Disable all macros with notification

Now, when you receive a file that has a macro in it, you will get a notice to that effect when you go to open the file. DO NOT allow the macro to run unless you are 100% sure that the file is from a trusted source and that it is supposed to have a macro in it.

 
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Well, I'm also an attorney, and a very heavy user of Word. The overwhelming majority of attorneys use Word just about all day, every day.

You've been told that there are "no viruses for the Mac" in this thread. Assuming that one is using "virus" to mean "malware", which is how most of the world defines it, then that is patently false and I wish that folks who should know better would stop saying that. At minimum, it is a misleading statement. There is definitely malware for the Macintosh. It may not technically be a virus, because it does not self-replicate, and it may be incredibly uncommon, but malware for the Macintosh does exist.

Microsoft Word is a special target. Because most versions of Word include Visual Basic for macros, "Word macro viruses" used to be wildly common. What you described sounds typical of the type of havoc that a Word macro virus used to cause. Your client may have encountered one.

Why aren't they wildly common anymore? It's not because they have been stamped out. It's because Word has what is known as "Macro Virus Protection" built-in. But...it doesn't work unless it is turned on AND the warnings it sends out are heeded.

To make sure that it is turned on, go to:
In Word:
Word menu --> Preferences --> Security & Privacy --> select: Disable all macros with notification

Now, when you receive a file that has a macro in it, you will get a notice to that effect when you go to open the file. DO NOT allow the macro to run unless you are 100% sure that the file is from a trusted source and that it is supposed to have a macro in it.


Thank you for the reminder about Word macro viruses.

Although I'm not sure, I don't THINK this is a macro problem in this particular case, because I have had 'Disable all macros with notification' turned on for ages, and I know not to allow external macros to run. The 'download fonts' problem first occurred about a year ago, and I haven't come across anything else going wrong since then, apart from the 'missing font' dialogs.

The only Word macro showing is one I wrote (though presumably that doesn't 100% prove I don't have an infected macro).
 
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You've been told that there are "no viruses for the Mac" in this thread. Assuming that one is using "virus" to mean "malware", which is how most of the world defines it, then that is patently false and I wish that folks who should know better would stop saying that. At minimum, it is a misleading statement. There is definitely malware for the Macintosh. It may not technically be a virus, because it does not self-replicate, and it may be incredibly uncommon, but malware for the Macintosh does exist.
Randy, I'm a bit surprised that as a lawyer you are so loose in the use of language in this situation. Every lawyer I have worked with has been very precise in the use of language, particularly as they drew up contacts and agreements for me in my work. Yes, the world is full of folks whose first thought whenever their computer does something strange is, "I have a virus." And in the Windows world, that thought is perfectly legitimate. And the obvious solution is to get an Anti-virus software package and install it both to eliminate the virus and to prevent future ones. But in the macOS world, there really are no true viruses and most of the commercial antivirus packages are just pure bunkum, snake oil and mirrors. They don't really DO anything and they generally slow down the machine in the process. Think Sophos, Norton, Kaspersky, etc. One of the reasons I am one of those folks who say "there are no viruses for Mac" is to try to stamp out these kinds of useless programs that people install and then regret.

Is there malware for the Mac? Sure, and I'll usually follow the "there are no viruses" statement with "but there is malware." But you don't need a resident program to protect yourself from the malware. Just DetectX Swift or VirusBarrier Scanner, as you yourself have strongly suggested. And I use both of those periodically to watch my system. But nothing needs to be permanently resident to protect me, and none of the antivirus programs that play to users fears are of any value. So that is why I say, and stand by saying it, that there are no viruses for the Mac, but there is malware.
 
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Randy, I'm a bit surprised that as a lawyer you are so loose in the use of language in this situation.

...

Is there malware for the Mac? Sure, and I'll usually follow the "there are no viruses" statement with "but there is malware."
... that is why I say, and stand by saying it, that there are no viruses for the Mac, but there is malware.

But that isn't what was said. I quote:

"First off, it's not a virus as none exist in the wild for Macs; nor do they behave in this way."

It wasn't I who was "loose in the use of the language". Saying that there "are no viruses for the Macintosh" is, at the minimum, very misleading when one knows that just about everyone thinks that "virus" is synonymous with "malware". If the original statement had included the additional phrase "but there is malware" it would have been more or less fine, though also potentially misleading without the inclusion of an explanation of the difference.

Or, to put it all a different way, being pedantic on the use to terminology (i.e. "virus") isn't helpful to someone concerned about malware.

Going around always saying "there are no viruses for the Macintosh" in response to someone fearful that they might be infected with one, without explaining what that phrase means and that Mac malware does exist, is misleading. A more helpful response might be to say "there is very little malware in the wild for the Macintosh, so that's not usually the solution for any problem that you might be having, but we can easily check to see if it is or not."

Also, if someone is having a problem, and that problem isn't consistent with what any known malware does, then say that. There has only ever been a [relatively] small amount of malware for the Mac. And we generally know what all of it tends to do. So if a user is experiencing a problem that it totally inconsistent with the effects of any known malware, you can tell them that malware is unlikely to be the problem in their particular situation.
 
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...The 'download fonts' problem first occurred about a year ago, and I haven't come across anything else going wrong since then, apart from the 'missing font' dialogs.

I don't know if this is the same problem that you are experiencing, but in the past I've had clients who had a HUGE excess of installed fonts. So I pared their fonts back. When doing so I found that there are a number of fonts that come with the Mac OS that are considered to be critical. That is, if you uninstall them your Mac will complain constantly about it, even if the font is some Asian font that you assume that you would never ever need. In those cases, re-installing the critical font, or, if necessary, reinstalling a fresh copy of the OS, fixed the problem.
 
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@Randy, we will agree to disagree on this subject.
 
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Going around always saying "there are no viruses for the Macintosh" in response to someone fearful that they might be infected with one, without explaining what that phrase means and that Mac malware does exist, is misleading. A more helpful response might be to say "there is very little malware in the wild for the Macintosh, so that's not usually the solution for any problem that you might be having, but we can easily check to see if it is or not."


+1, I agree completely, or as some used to say... "totally".

Wasn't that an expression the "Valley girls" used waaaay back when... in something like the '80s???

BTW, what are gremlin activities classified under???

Or, I guess they just stand on their own. We encountered one earlier today when "fixing" my AirPrint problem with the ISP tech!!! ;)


- Patrick
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...as some used to say... "totally".

Wasn't that an expression the "Valley girls" used waaaay back when... in something like the '80s???

I'm originally from "the Valley" (that is, the San Fernando Valley in southern California) where "valley talk" originated. (I now live about 600 miles north, in NorCal.)

For some reason valley talk originated in the early '70's. I don't have a really good memory of it, but I do remember that there were so many new words coined that an outsider might not have known what people were saying.

We used words like "rasty" (a combination of rotten and nasty), "grody", "tubular" and "gnarly".

It was a perfect storm of baby boomers, a newly resurgent middle class, a great economy, and a location with nearby beaches, movie stars, and lots of conspicuous consumption that led to a culture shift that lasted for over a decade.
 
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@Randy, we will agree to disagree on this subject.

That's fine. But every time you go around telling someone who isn't techy that "there are no Viruses for the Macintosh", someone will have to tell them that while that guidance is pedantically correct, that that is an extremely misleading statement. There IS malware for the Macintosh, even if it isn't common. And "malware" in most people's minds is synonymous with "virus".

Here is an entire article about this subject:
 
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Heh, an article from a company that sells software to protect Macs. Yep, no bias there.

We still agree to disagree, and I'm ok with that.
 
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Heh, an article from a company that sells software to protect Macs. Yep, no bias there.

That article was written prior to Thomas Reed selling out to MalwareBytes. He had no agenda at the time other than to help Mac users.

Do you have a contra citation?

It would be best for everyone if you didn't mislead Mac users into thinking that there is no malware for the Macintosh, when there clearly is. There was an example of a Mac user who was infected with malware who posted just today. It's not common, but it does exist.
 

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And with that, we are done.
 
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