How can I find out what a macro does without exposing myself to it?

Question

I have been given two different Microsoft Word document that my virus scanner has warned me contains macros. These should be simple text files, and the person who sent them doesn't even know what a macro is; they may be a mistake on his part, but they might be signs of a malicious infection. My installation of OpenOffice.org is set not to load macros at all, as I rarely use them, so I am not concerned about the security of my system. What I would like to be able to do is find out what those macros do without exposing my system to any malicious intent from those macros, in order to tell the person who sent me the documents whether or not he is spreading an infection.

Answer 1

Just to expound on top of these previous posts -

Here is the process I followed -

1. Open file
2. Enable Editing to get out of protected view
3. AltF11 to open the Visual Basic editor
   • Sometimes you can apparently view the macros here, in my Word 2013 I could not.
4. Minimize or close the VB editor window. We'll reopen in a minute
5. Hold Shift while you click Enable Content. This will keep it from running AutoOpen macros.
6. AltF11 to open the Visual Basic editor.
7. Now you may see the macros that you didn't see before.