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."

Comments

Re:Default value goes back pretty far

[ta bu shi da yu]

Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with the "file formats". A file format is not insecure. The issue is that Microsoft is shipping insecure code in Office 2007 and 2003 which may break when these files are opened and allow malicious executable code to run in the user's security context. Rather than fix this insecure code in a shipping product, their policy is to turn off the code and tell the user, "if you want to take the risk, turn it back on, but we won't make it easy."

Thank you!!! Sanest comment I've seen in a long time.

Re:Mind-bogglingly complex?

[deniable]

That EXE contains ADM files / Group Policy templates. It's perfect if you're running an AD domain but is not much use for individual users. Those people can get whoever does their support now to use method 2.

'Mind bogglingly complex' indicates the submitter can't be trusted with a box of crayons.

Re:Typical MS "Planned Obselescence"

[Vellmont]

Given that Apple seem to end support after 6-7 years, and there's no evidence that any OSS offering will extend support that far back, why is there suddenly an outcry with Microsoft stopping support file formats which are now over a decade old?

A whole decade eh?

I'm not sure what file format OSS and Apple have dropped that are older than 1997. But just off the top of my head I'd guess that plain old ascii format with CR/LF is 25 years old at least. GIF is more than 20 years old. There's plenty of OSS, closed source software, even Microsoft software that supports these formats.

Your excuse that these formats are "over a decade old" is pretty lame. Do you really think people don't have old files they want to read 5-10 years later?