Anti-virus vendors, angered that Microsoft did not work closely with them during the development of Office 97, are claiming that the new suite is susceptible to virus infection because of the new file formats used by many 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 common macro 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 on Office 97-compatible virus scanners