Office 2003 SP3 blocks old file formats

Microsoft Corp. deliberately broke access to older files, including many generated by its own products, to step up security with the newest Office 2003 service pack, a company evangelist said yesterday.

The months-old Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Office 2003, said Viral Tapara, a U.K.-based IT evangelist for Microsoft, blocks old file formats for security purposes. "Some older file formats, including some from Microsoft, are insecure and do not satisfy new attack vectors that hackers can use to execute malicious code," maintained Tapara. "The decision to block the formats is strictly to protect your machine from being compromised."

Office 2003 SP3 was released in September, and questions about file access error messages began appearing almost immediately on Microsoft's support forums.