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Office 2003 Service Pack Disables Older File Formats
time961 writes "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source. Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward 'Do you really want to do this?' dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats ... many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives."
I don't know if I'd characterize it as "mind-bogglingly complex". It's a series of registry edits. There will probably be appropriate .REG files released by various parties in the next few days, and if you're paranoid, it should take about 15 minutes to roll your own. As for users in non-managed environments, I don't know how many home users really try to access files that are over a decade old.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
According to TFA, you still can open and save the files (Word 95 and older, and other ancient formats), you need to edit the registry to enable the formats.
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
An easy work-around is to just install Open Office and then open the obsolete files using the appropriate Open Office program (Writer for Word documents, Calc for Excel spreadsheets, etc.). The user can then do a "save as" and select a newer Microsoft file format. Voila. Problem solved.
Microsoft probably won't like this work-around since a certain percentage of users may realize that they don't need to pay Microsoft for programs that don't do what they want and they can get a suite of programs that does what they want for free. Realizing this, Microsoft may decide to come up with a better internal solution but don't count on it.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
When I worked in government, I found that people argued (with a lot of money at stake) over the wording of property ownership documents over a hundred years old. Whenever I hear people say something like this, I hope they're not in charge of anything lasting.
Of course, I wish our nation's military was not run on Powerpoint, but the reality is that much of our military activity (by far the largest department in government) is only documented in Powerpoint.
That already happened with Word '97. Big companies changed and everyone else had to follow. Microsoft caught a lot of heat and stopped making major format changes on every version. This patch blocks stuff from before '97, so I don't think there are too many people swapping documents around that will be affected. It will screw people who are digging out old copies of documents though.
Given that they are trying to push new formats with 2007, I can see the upgrade treadmill being driven from there. docx, anyone?
I guess the submitter missed the link to an exe you can use to do it for you. I mean, it is buried in the KB article as "Method 1" after all...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
At the risk of being scored -1 redundant, you are wrong.
"After you install Office 2003 SP3, some Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, and Corel Draw (.cdr) file formats are blocked. By default, these file formats are blocked because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you."
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Examples:
-No DirectX 10.x API for WinXP or Win2k. (The nature of the API to be a higher-level Application Programming Interface, I'd forgive not developing for Win2k as it is no longer for sale, but there's NO good reason to deny the API in WinXP, other than to force clearly Planned Obsolescence)
-No IE7 for Win2k. (interestingly, Firefox still bests ALL versions of IE..)
-No Support on your year-old PC for Full Windows Vista use. (Again, why? Even Apple and Linux have pretty eye-candied desktops working on older hardware)
-No to the Sale of WinXP to OEM (non-Business) customers this month http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/12/microsoft-pulling-oem-windows-xp-next-january/.
-Etc... (insert your own here)
I know that in my present line of work, my colleagues and I write meticulous research reports for our multi-million dollar clients.
Our clients specifically require us to NOT use *any* MS Office 2007 file format; We are to utilize 'not newer than MS Office 2003 format'. (Typically Excel, Access, and Word formats are used).
Our clients have gone on to clarify, specifically, that the Office 2007 file formats are incompatible with the older MS Office versions and necessitate needless corporate updating for their thousands of internal users, (not to mention the client has decades of reports on file that get updated every 10 to 20 years, often utilizing the original editable report document).
I too will soon be installing in Open Office very soon. (Hopefully the Excel 2003 formulas and those dating back to Excel 2.0 all work properly in Open Office?)...
It appears that this "update" is not so much for security or even for ease of development (because it WAS previously WORKING in situ). It stragetically forces users of the older versions of MS Office to update to the new version (or rather adopt the new format) due to interoperability issues.
If MS Office 2003 did 'it' before and it does not do 'it' now, post-SP3... that is *Intentional*, not "For Your Protection".
-This would be akin to IE8 not opening 'older' web page formats at all because they used some older and (potentially) unsafe format of html, CSS, Scripting etc.. it deemed unsafe!
Because a ridiculously complicated registry hack is required to enable the converters for the old documents, there's no easy way to apply it, for example as an Active Directory group policy. We're left with error-prone methods like push tools & login scripts.
While the rest of your comment was spot on, this is a load of rubbish. The "registry hack" is not so complicated that it can't be handled via GP - it's just a few values to disable the blocks - straight values, no mystery here, no machine-specific considerations. This would be incredibly simple to apply via GP, or via the administrative templates, as explained in the KBase link.
Originally from http://thedailywtf.com/
Hmm, can anyone say anti-competitive abuse of a monopoly? Yes, I know there are some alternatives to Word but I've had nothing but odd problems when I use Open Office or Apple's Pages. In the business world you are pretty much required to send people Word documents, even if you are sending them a resume. If you don't use Word you are playing russian roulette with your file, maybe it will work, maybe there will be some odd issue like the page headers not printing properly.
I really wish we could all get on the same page and come up with a good, highly accepted, replacement format to Microsoft Word and Excel. I know that alternative formats are being worked on but they all look like they have a snowball's chance in hell at getting accepted over the Word document format.
Sapere aude!
There is a tool called DROID (Digital Record Object Identification) that will scan a bunch of files and identify the file formats (including the version, not just the mime type).
It is developed by the Digital Preservation department at the UK National Archives, licensed under a BSD license, and is available from source forge:
http://droid.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Introduction
Nope
Your missing where the parent is coming from, though I'll admit it is a bit obtuse..
Looky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
ODF is zipped xml, neither of which is likely to get superseded / outdated / made incompatible for a while:
1) XML is human readable (Sorta, kinda, mostly)
2) ZIP (tm) is widely used by countless libs and apps, and decompression has been reverse engineered, open sourced, dissected, inspected, and neglected (Apologies to Arlo Guthry) to death.
Writing an application to open an ODF file in the future should not be a problem, unlike this article's messy scenario.....
The Sproggg
I think his point was more about that in 20 years time we will still be able to access ODF documents.
...unless you do it professionnaly on acid and bleach free paper, with real ink. Laser toner won't stick to paper for more than 10 ~ 15 years, after that it begings to turn back to powder. Thermal (old fax) paper is worse, inkjet printers are marginaly better but don't expect anything to last over 30 years with home and office printing technologies.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795 There are also various references to idiots and morons, some external, some within Microsoft. The file private\ntos\rtl\heap.c, which dates from 1989, tells us The full comment is this It's no biggie really, they just added some parameter checks so that trying to free an invalid pointer means an error is returned rather than corrupting the process's heap.
Just an off-topic shout-out to the memory of Phil Katz, designer of the zip file format and related compression routines, now found everywhere in the industry. Phil died in 2000 as a result of alcoholism/depression.
/.'er... He hated Windows.
Sidenote: He would have made a great
Katz Obit
Katz Remembrance
ZIP has not been reverse engineered, for the simple reason that from day 1 it ZIP has been an open format.
I still have some floppy laying around with early version of the software which included a complete documentation of the format. Documentation of the containers, and the various compression algorithme that where available back then up to Shrink/Expand (The modern Deflate/Inflate weren't introduced yet back then).
Anyone wishing could back then re-implement ZIP support into his/her own code.
Which in itself is one additional argument showing why trusting Microsoft formats is bad.
Today, they just removed support for archaeologically-old formats. How long until someone in a marketing department in Redmond decides it would be a brilliant idea to remove support in current DOC/PPT/XLS format in order to force people to move to OOXML formats ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's not. Using a different file format is helping you to read current formats in 20 years, when Microsoft pulls this same stunt again.
Random and weird software I've written.
Most people already finish their PhD *at least* 9 years after they start undergrad (that's assuming 4 years of undergrad and 5 years of graduate school, which is actually lower than average). And suppose someone graduated from college, spent a few years (2 to 3, maybe?) in the industry, and then decided to go back and earn a PhD (I suppose there are a number of reasons for this, ranging from the PhD being necessary to advancement in career to becoming disinterested in making money and (re-)entering academia). That's easily 12 years, and I didn't have to concoct any unusual scenario like someone waking out of coma after 10 years.
As for what kind of information one would be looking for
"What the heck does the following mean?"
Well it looks like the blocking of older formats is done by a registry check office does on start, the admin values would be something you could set as a group policy... pretty standard stuff.
But blocking compatibility via the registry? nothing to worry about then i suppose...
Or just kill a few trees and make hard copies. Those tend to never go "obsolete" and can be re-created in any of the current formats.
Printing takes time and money. Storing printed text costs space (money). Re-entering data takes time and money.
You shouldn't have to go through this kind of SHIT to open a fucking word processor document a few years after you create it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer