Microsoft posts "Office 98 Unwanted Data Patch"

Microsoft has posted its "Office 98 Unwanted Data Patch." This fixes the "security" bug described here previously. As Microsoft states: "This update resolves a recently discovered problem in which Office 98 inadvertently includes data from previously deleted files when saving a document. If you download this patch Office 98 will completely erase the portion of a disk a saved file will occupy before saving the file. The patch utility makes changes to a file called Microsoft Office First Run in the Microsoft Office 98 folder, and then will cause the First Run file to update OLE shared library files which reside in the Extensions folder." (Thanks, John Wilson and MacNN.)

As described in a TidBITS article, the cause of the problem appears to be due to a bug in Microsoft's OLE technology. [Also check Microsoft's "Known Issues" Web page.]