Way to go MSFT. Thanks for looking out for my well being. Too bad I'm on a deadline and can't open my figgin' files! Morons.

I had someone that couldn't open certain Office files she used all the time. I ended up copying those files to another system, resaving them, then transferring back to the original system. This was a new computer and I installed Office 2003. Being the good IT guy I also installed all updates. Now I understand what happened.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810/en-us

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.

Thanks for the heads up, Alan.

Some of their own file formats are blocked? That is really strange. I will have to remember not to install that update!

That's a pretty drastic action for a company which prides itself on backwards-compatibility.

You'd think they would allow you to load the file formats, but then just "ignore" whatever extra feature they deem to be dangerous (macros, I would assume).

How can I check if auto-updating is turned on/off?

If my memory is still right, didn't MS have another problem with Office about 10 years back. One couldn't open a Word doc saved on one version with an older version or something like that. I believe in time things were fix, until the next screw up.

I suppose making Office 2003 less compatible with ITSELF would tend to push large business customers who just throw money at problems to "upgrade" to 2007, which of course, is probably backwards compatible with Office 2003 when the right conversion files are loaded.

Gotta love Micro$oft.