Office 2003 update blocks older file formats

The latest service pack for Microsoft Office 2003 has made a range of older files inaccessible, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, it emerged this week.

Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which was made available in September, blocks a lengthy list of word-processing file formats, including Word 6.0 and Word 97 for Windows, and Word 2004 for Macintosh. It also blocks older versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Corel Quattro spreadsheet, and Corel Draw graphics package.

On releasing the service pack, Microsoft said one of its main benefits was that it would make it easier to interoperate with Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, and its latest productivity suite, Office 2007. The older file formats that are now blocked are in decreasing day-to-day use, but the blocking of them will make retrieval of archived material more difficult.

The changes were revealed in a Microsoft support document, which was uploaded to its site in December. Users were given no warning of the effects when they downloaded SP3.

In the support document, Microsoft said SP3 blocked access to those formats because they were less secure than newer versions. "By default, these file formats are blocked because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you," it said.

Microsoft released details of a work-around to restore access. The work-around requires changes to the registry, which could render a PC unusable if carried out incorrectly.

The work-around was branded by one critic on tech Web site Slashdot as "mind-bogglingly complex."

Other users responded negatively to the change. A system administrator at a U.K. university, who asked not to be named, called it "a money-making exercise," adding that it would cause a problem to the central IT resource not to have access to some older file formats but that the effect would be greater on other less "progressive" departments within the university.

Microsoft could offer no comment at the time of writing on why it had blocked access to the file formats.

Richard Thurston of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[The_Decider]

There is no reason for this

All MS formats and products are a security risk, that is a given. At least they are admitting it.

This is yet another example of MS needing to resort to sleazy tactics to force upgrades without looking at the big picture.

It is also a poignant reminder why open standards are necessary. Your data is held hostage at the whims of a giant corporation whose only means of making more money is to attempt to force upgrades.

Convert all your files, old and new to ODF and ditch the lock-in and forced upgrades, along with the massive amounts of security risk.

[Mike Van De North]

MicrobigBrotherSoft!

I want to take this opportunity to thank Microbigbrothersoft for taking the insinuative and showing me that all my old documents and files pose a risk to me and my computer..... I realize that I am incapable of protecting myself. That's is why I am removing all my Microbigbrothersoft files including office, Money, explorer and finally windows and going with all open source software. Thank you microbigbrothersoft for showing me the way!

Man what a SCAM!

[{DvT}Hex]

This makes no sense

The only reason for having M$ Office on a computer is to have something with which to practice uninstalling software. As long as it is used as developed, there should never be any "documents" or security risk from them.

[Grumpyz77]

Bass Ackwards Again

The non-compatibility is no surprise and just gives one more reason to find more replacements for MS programs. What is inexcusable is publishing a release and then 4 months later doing an, ?Oh by the way your legacy data is useless document.? Unfortunately I did the update and found out the hard way that there is an incompatibility issue. The registry hack doesn?t work either. The MS tech I ended up with had to have me do a uninstall and lengthy clean-up. (And it still doesn?t clean it all) What?s the best business productivity bundle for LINUX or even MS for that matter that will read new and old Office documents? It just goes to show the fact that if you keep telling the same lie long enough it will become fact. Now progress is defined as moving backwards. Thanks Bill.

[driven01]

Latest Microsoft products

I tried Vista ... went back to XP. I tried Office 2007 and went back to Office 2003. (Mostly due to the way Outlook handled flagged e-mails and the generally slowness (glacial) of the product.)

Now apparently I need to avoid service packs because some knucklehead wants to remove existing features. (Such as the ability to read my archived files ... which I do on a regular basis.)

I sincerely hope the next generation of products are better otherwise I'll be on XP for a LONG time. (Or switch to Linux or a Mac.)

If nothing else ... this had really shown me the value of open document formats.

[ittesi259]

This is typical Microsoft

Older files less secure? Maybe....

Real reason...."If we build it, they no longer come, but if we break the old stuff they will buy the new stuff to maintain compatibility."

This is nothing more than a totally sick ploy to force people who use pre 2k3 to get 2k7...which is a piece of crap.

[Jon N.]

M$ shows it's true colours...AGAIN!

I have been using M$ products ever since my first computer, a TRS-80 Model I. After years and years of touting that they want to stay true to their "legacy" programming, and their backward compatibility "legacy" initiatives, they now do this! If they wanted to do this, they should have just done it at the beginning of the creation of Longhorn/Vista, and started building their OS from the ground up, and not tout the old with the new attitude that they always state when they remake their old Windoze OS. This is just more proof that Microshaft is not thinking of their customer base, but only their own bottom line and pocketbook. Have you seen the prices for Office 2007? Program version upgrades are never as good as the complete versions of the same program. Yet, M$ wants to charge 2x to 2.5x more for the complete versions of the same program! Now, this update of Office 2003, is now going to make all of your records from 10 years ago, OBSOLETE! For all of those reading this, declare war on this fascist attitude of take it 'cause we say so, and switch to OpenOffice.org. It has all the code and backward-compatibility you need for your older file formats, and they have the code for the newest formats, as well. M$ touts that the older formats are less secure. That's just not true. It's THEIR OS that has security problems, not the file formats. If they were to shore up and secure the codes that allow the system to acknowledge those formats, there wouldn't be a concern for security over these formats. This is the tail wagging the dog at its best! Again, M$ wants to blame the older code of theirs on Word, Excel, Power-point, and other versions from other vendors. No, Mr. Ballmer, it's the OS, stupid! Your productivity software is only as secure as your OS! Now is the time to revolt! Go to OpenOffice.org, download the latest version, and say goodbye to M$ Office. I did 4 years ago, and never regretted it! If you feel a bit guilty not paying anything for this great program, they do accept donations. You can feel better about it all, and a $50 donation per year to them goes a long way. OpenOffice updates its code about every 6 months. Ubuntu, Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, OpenSUSE, MEPIS Linux, and dare I say, A MAC are looking better and better every single day! Could this be the beginning of the end for M$'s proprietary software stranglehold? We can only hope so. By M$ taking this action, it sure looks like it will. The more you tighten your grip M$, the more computer systems will slip through your fingers! The Problem: M$ Office 2003 SP3. The solution: OpenOffice.org!

[Penguinisto]

Microsoft Lied. Blatantly.

Security does not rest in the file format, but in how the application (any application) handles the file contents.

A chunk of malicious VB script in a .doc macro by itself is worthless and harmless when opened with an app that isn't MS Word (e.g. OpenOffice, TextEdit in Apple OSX, etc). That same chunk of VB scripted macro, when MS Office opens it? Well, that's a whole other story...

This is nothing more than a naked attempt to bolster sagging sales and force the upgrade treadmill to spin just a little faster.

IMHO, an business with even a teaspoon of sense would seriously consider converting their documentation (and spreadseets, etc) to an open-standard (for instance ODF) format, so they can at least open and edit those files 10 years from now without fearing obsolescence or periodically wasting time on mass conversion.

Ironically, MS Office 2003 has a plugin to convert documents to ODF format.

Of course, once you do this, you may just discover that you no longer need MS Office for much of anything, considering the free and highly capable alternatives already out there.

/P

[mike.gw]

PUT IT BACK!

As an IT Director, I use Microsoft's Windows Update service to keep my workstations patched with the latest security and bug fixes for Windows and Office. I do not have an installed platform for internal centralized pushing of these updates.

As a public relations firm, my company has at least 20 years of material in various Word formats, that folks often review and tailor for new business needs. It will be a HUGE problem for our firm for my users to come in after an evening of automatic Windows Updates, and find they can no longer open historical documents. I will NOT go desktop to desktop to edit registry files.

I am trusting Windows Update to keep my desktops safe from possible outside attacks. I do not expect Windows Update to remove existing functionality, and certainly not without warning!!! I fully expect Microsoft to restore the older file compatibility with a new emergency Windows Update, to be release immediately!

[yo_supermom]

Not an issue afterall

I don't get the issue. I have Office 2003 with SP3 and I just tried opening my archived Word and Excel files going back to 1991. No Problem. Everything opens fine.

What's all the fuss about?

[ajhoughton]

Don't use MS formats for archival

This just highlights the stupidity of using MS formats for
document archival. It isn't the only problem with doing that,
either. For instance:

- Some versions of Word have in the past saved corrupted files
under some circumstances, which open in that version of Word,
but no later version.

- Often people link rather than embed objects, which means you
need to keep the other files too (often this doesn't happen, or
they're at a different path and so can't be located automatically).

For archival purposes, it's best to store things in PDF. You might
keep the original files too, but as this demonstrates, there's no
guarantee that you will be able to open them in future.

[NWLB]

Tis why I use Open Office.

I haven't bought a new version of Office since 2000.

Is OO perfect? No. Its still a resource hog, slow to load. But it works, its free, and it gets the job done. Plus I don't have to worry about Microsoft doing something stupid every other week.

NWLB
***************
NWLBtech.com

[oxtail01]

So what?

What's the big deal. People who still run and retain ancient file formats shouldn't give a Sh... about going with sp3 anyway. Maybe they're all happy still running DOS software. If they'rew so upset about MS they can very easily convert to some other format offered by lesser known vendors. I don't know of any semi-literate computer users who haven't at least converted their old files. All you MS haters are getting ridiculous in your rants. I'm no MS lover either but if we had it your way, MS would still need to support all DOS formats. Stop your childish crying and grow up!

[Lee in San Diego]

In unrelated news

The next TV advert from Apple will have John Hodges lamenting
how he can not open his old Word files

[timber2005]

History for All readers

It says Word 97 format was removed. If you didn't know, Word 2000 introduced a slightly diffrent format called Word 2000. Office 2003 saves in both formats (Word 97-2003) so it will open in either Word 97, Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003. Now Office 2003 SP3 can just save to Word 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.

Oh no! Word 97 users are left in the dust! But... kind of like IE5 users, they must be getting used to things not displaying right ANYWAY.

What doesn't quite make sense (of all the really acient formats that should have been blocked... but maybe in 2007) is that Word 2004 for Mac format was blocked.

[JJarJam]

Don't worry, the sky's not falling

It's weird how certain people only "trust" Microsoft when someone tells them that Microsoft has "admitted" doing something heinous.

Here's a clue - SP3 was released 3 months ago. If your automatically updated users haven't been complaining about lost functionality by now, they're very unlikely to start showing up at your door tomorrow morning.

[mike.gw]

Open Office is NOT the answer

In a corporate environment, you don't have a user base full of geeks anxious to try out every new release of Linux and Open Office. While we may not like it, Microsoft Windows and Office are an entrenched standard. Moving away from the standard involves serious issues for a corporation:

Training
10 to 15 years ago, it was a must to train each new hire in the proper use of MS Office. Now, you have folks coming out of college who are proficient in MS Office and Windows. As a result, a business' training costs are dramatically slashed.

Support
With more users and support staff knowledgable in MS Office, that creates a readily available pool of knowledge to help solve problems. Even if a new staffer can't get the helpdesk on the phone, their cubicle neighbor may know how to assist them in doing a mail merge. If a small business relies on outside consultants, there are larger pools of MS Office expertise available for hire, than there are for Open Office.

Compatibility
Businesses rely on not just MS Office, but a variety of plugins/macros/etc that are designed to work with MS Office to get the job done. It's almost as if MS Office becomes a platform in that regard for development. Going with a solution other than MS Office may break these applications. Bloomberg's news software has a plugin that works with Excel, for instance. Then, you can even have variations in how different programs read a complex formatted file. There is always some format issue when using one program to read another's file format. If a client sends a business a Word 2003 file, and the business edits it in Open Office, what happens if Open Office drops a special style bullet that the client chose in Word? Do you tell your client to find another style bullet compatible with your copy of Open Office? Not if you want to stay in business!

I'm not advocating for Microsoft. If I had my way, we would still be using Netware and Groupwise! Or maybe Linux. The point is that if you have thousands of clients (as we do) that you share files with, or many programs that depend on the presence of known standards, bucking the standard introduces compatibility issues for the business. Until Open Office reaches that critical mass, it will not replace MS Office as the business standard. In fact, I'd bet there are more copies of Corel WordPerfect (free with some PCs) in use than there are of Open Office.

[frankz00]

Paving The Way For Google Apps

This is a strong argument for moving to Google Apps. Let's face 90% of Office users use 10% of it's functionality. If there's not going to be any compatibility with anything else, why not switch to Google Apps. Most of my new documents go into Google Apps because in most cases, they are quick documents that I need to write up and it's nice to have them accessible anywhere.

For more complicated there might be justification for using an Office Suite but I don't know that it's work $800.

[winstein]

Boneheads!!!

Microsoft is so big and has its resources spread so thin that make stupid decisions as if they were fresh out of college with absolutely no clue about the industry, the technology, the history, or purpose of the products. Why are we making backups and archives if we cannot access the files in the future?

[bob donut]

WordPerfect an option?

Is there any chance that word perfect/Corel Suite can be used to supplant office? It's the only commercially sustained product I know of that nears Office's level of features.