Evil Clippy

Did you know that there is a tool called https://github.com/outflanknl/EvilClippy? Me neither. Per the link,

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A cross-platform assistant for creating malicious MS Office documents. Can hide VBA macros, stomp VBA code (via P-Code) and confuse macro analysis tools. Runs on Linux, OSX and Windows.

If you're new to this tool, you might want to start by reading our blog post on Evil Clippy: https://outflank.nl/blog/2019/05/05/evil-clippy-ms-office-maldoc-assistant/

This project should be used for authorized testing or educational purposes only.

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Why would I be looking at this page? Because I have macros in my templates that I cannot edit. When I select the macro, the Edit button is disabled. Thus, I was looking for a solution and when I came upon this page - VBA-Project Locked - Project is Unviewable - I was initially happy. It led me to the GitHub page and that's where my happiness evaporated because I read the following:

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Compilation

We do not provide a binary release for EvilClippy. Please compile executables yourself:

OSX and Linux

Make sure you have Mono installed. Then execute the following command from the command line:

mcs /reference:OpenMcdf.dll,System.IO.Compression.FileSystem.dll /out:EvilClippy.exe *.cs

Now run Evil Clippy from the command line:

mono EvilClippy.exe -h

Windows

Make sure you have Visual Studio installed. Then execute the following command from a Visual Studio developer command prompt:

csc /reference:OpenMcdf.dll,System.IO.Compression.FileSystem.dll /out:EvilClippy.exe *.cs

Now run Evil Clippy from the command line:

EvilClippy.exe -h

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I have never compiled a program - EVER! It's not that I don't want to learn how to compile a program - it's that I have managed to find a simple issue I want to fix - being able to edit a macro that I created - that has a complex answer. Sigh. I'm an English major and sometimes just saying that feels like an excuse. After all, I truly do not have the technical expertise of a developer. I think Alex has more logic and reasoning skills than I do - and I'm the adult in the room! I think that because he has taken coding classes at UNI whereas I never have taken a formal coding class. Sometimes I think I'd like to do so - and to that end, I've looked at what classes are available to me on the LinkedIn training site. Perhaps I will learn how to compile a program.

Want to Irk Me? Use MS Word like THIS

I'm permanently scarred from working at the Unnamed Hellhole in southern Iowa - that's the only conclusion I can arrive at when I feel the disgust flowing through my bloodstream as I view a MS Word document that is formatted like the following:

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The Unnamed Hellhole in southern Iowa gets all the credit / blame because that is where the other writer in the department with the title "Senior Technical Writer" insisted upon using InDesign entirely the wrong way. There is no justification to manually type the TOC entries, the leader dots, and the page number. There is no justification to print the 100+ pages in the document to manually check that the page number in the TOC matches the body of the document. There is no justification to state that the "rule" for using one or two spaces after a period is to "use one unless it looks funny, then use two."

I have no doubt in my mind that the aforementioned ex-co-worker would have seen nothing wrong with the screen capture above.

My Favorite Kind

This email arrived earlier this week and I had it on my list of posts I wanted to write. It's from a friend of mine I used to work with at a previous employer:

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Today I received a word document to help some one with the Table of Contents . A simple Table of Contents with three heading levels was needed, but every time the existing TOC was refreshed all headers were lost. So I asked them to send the document to me. As I realized the issue, ...... no style, all formatting was done manually, even the TOC, and of course the bullets and numbering. I ended up defining the styles, and asked them to create a template. Sounds familiar?

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My response:

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Too familiar...

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That said, I'm actually jealous my friend got this type of project - it's my favorite kind!

Template-Work-Instruction-Job-Aid.docx

When I need to find the template for work instructions, here it is: Template-Work-Instruction-Job-Aid.docx