Can I have Microsoft Word open while doing virus scans?

[✖Edward Kenway✖]

I need to finish up a project that I have for school and my Word documents are on my computer. Yesterday, at night my computer started to act suspiciously weird after I accidently clicked on a page while on Facebook. It might've been a virus, or my computer could've just been slow, as I had had it on since the morning. So, I was wondering if having Microsoft Word open would interfere with the virus scans?
I'm basically saying, if say there WAS a virus on my computer.
If having Word open could cause my anti-virus not to detect it, against having nothing open at all and my anti-virus detecting it.
@ Isabel
THANKS! Just what I was looking for! ^-^

[Isabel]

You can keep programs open during virus scans, however the memory used to run the scan will slow down any programs you have open. It's easy enough to run scans in the background while working but they just use a lot of RAM so it makes anything run slowly, including internet.

[YoungMan]

Yes but it will be really slow

[dabhdude]

That will be fine... however... I would recommend (if you can) setting the "priority" on the scan to low, or something like that. This will allow the scan to run, but it will use up less RAM. The scan will run longer than if you had it on High, but it will allow for more applications to be open.

[Charles]

Yes you can but it is not recommended specially for users with slow computer.