Oh, and neither will the older Windows versions be readable in the latest Windows Office...
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Posted on 01/07/2008 12:07:28 AM PST by Swordmaker
Update title to: Microsoft hoses user data - again!
For most users the Office SP3 means that they won’t be able to recover their old documents. They won’t know to install Open Office, access Microsoft support or edit the registry. But bowing to complaints that the data is not literally “destroyed” I’m updating the title here. But anyone who doesn’t think that most users will be baffled and hurt by this doesn’t know many average users. End update.
Will Microsofties ever learn?
Without warning the Microsoft Office SP3 update blocks over a dozen common document formats, including many Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents. Install the update and you can’t open the files. Why? Because they can!
We don’t care. We don’t have to.
What’s affected? Powerpoint formats prior to PowerPoint 97. Excel formats prior to Office 2003. Lotus, Quatro and Corel Draw. And the following Word formats:
Trust us. It is for your own good.
Microsoft forthrightly explains why in article 938810 buried deep in the support section of their web site:
"By default, these file formats are blocked because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you."
So no whining, peasants.
Thank you sir, may I have another?
Of course, it would be irresponsible to block these formats without notification if a work-around wasn’t provided. All you have to do is edit the registry, a task so simple a child could do it. Do it correctly? Ah, that’s the rub.
Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.
Alarmist? No doubt. Here’s a sample instruction:
To enable Office 2003 to open files that are saved in previous Word file formats, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.Note This registry subkey may not be present. If the subkey is not present, you must create it.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\FileOpenBlock
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\FileOpenBlock>
For example, the default value of this entry is set to “Word 6.0 for Windows” or “101.” This setting means that all Word documents that were created in Word 1.x for Windows through Word 2.x for Windows Taiwan are blocked from opening. You can increase or decrease the default version. The versions that are specified in the list are in ascending order.
- Double-click the FilesBeforeVersion registry entry, and then type the value in the Value data box that corresponds to one of the values in the following table.
Or you could just skip Office 2003 SP3. Perhaps that would be best.
The Storage Bits take
If anyone still trusts Microsoft with their data, this is reality’s final boarding call. We need open document standards that are NOT defined by Microsoft and that Microsoft is required to support.
Microsoft also needs serious file system competition (see How Microsoft puts your data at risk and Outlook’s risky archives - and how to fix them ) before they will get serious about reducing data corruption and protecting your data.
Oh, be sure to turn off automatic updates. And wait for them to fix Windows Home Server’s little file corruption problem.
Comments welcome. Please, Redmond spinmeisters, make me feel good about this!
Update: “Limp” best describes the early defenses of Microsoft’s indefensible action. Some have accused me of sensationalism for using “destroys” rather than “renders inaccessible” in the title. No apologies there: yes the data may be intact, but if you can’t read it how does that differ from destruction?
We’re all reasonably technical here. But think of the hundreds of millions of users who aren’t, the small businesses and grandmothers who rely on their computers for work and play, who’ll install SP3 and then maybe not realize for weeks or months that they can’t access their data. What are they supposed to do?
Update 2: A commenter placed an incomplete list of the blocked file formats so here is the complete list of blocked Word formats from the MS article.
Blocked file format:
Oh, and neither will the older Windows versions be readable in the latest Windows Office...
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I’m the average user who is now very nervous. I have Word 6.0 for all my business documents.
bfl
It allows you to open and save in multiple formats besides its own .odt (open document text) with all the formatting retained.
I just read the Microsoft article, and I think the ZDnet article got it wrong.
It appears to me that the ZD author saw the entire list of "Word File Versions", and ASSUMED that they were ALL being blocked.
THIS IS NOT TRUE, at least as I read the Microsoft article.
What it looks like to me is that they have blocked files created with versions OLDER THAN 97. The table of -all- file type codes is near the bottom of the Microsoft page. It is NOT a list of blocked versions!
Read this and see what you think:
Ping
I just finished looking at the Microsoft page... and it may be true... or it may be false. The page is written in a very turgid and unclear manner. I suggest anyone worried about it try and read the page themselves and see what they take from it.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810
Well, I'm no fan of MS, as you know... but I can't believe that Microsoft would cut off the ability to read files created with office versions within the past couple of years. That's insane. They might do it by accident, but not intentionally. Older than a decade? Sure, though even that is, in the words of one of Microsoft's own people, "draconian".
One way or t'other I'll know soon -- my users who have Office 2003 have to get at old files created by Office 2000, Office XP, etc. If they're blocked, my work is cut out for me.
"All Word files that have a version number that is less than but not equal to
Word 6.0 for Windows are blocked from opening.
It appears that Microsoft has revised its page... and corrected some of the confusion.
The default setting to allow opening Word files is 101... the number for MS Word 6.0. For Mac users, all of the Word for Mac files, except Word for Mac 4.x and Word for Mac 5.x, have version numbers greater than 101... and are therefore openable.
i think it should be pointed out that Microsoft is not alone in this approach. Apple has made it almost impossible to open old documents saved in AppleWorks of ClarisWorks in Pages...
Good reason to have multiple machines at multiple levels.
I have a dust covered laptop somewhere that has WIN 3.1 on it.
Okay, makes sense.
> The problem is changing ANY access to a file format with an automatic update without notifying the user of the change.
Oh, agreed 100%.
> I have clients who have historical files in Windows Word formats prior to 6.0... which are now blocked IF they upgrade to the SP3 for Office 2003.
I wonder, if you open a very old, blocked document in a old but non-blocked version, and re-save, can it then be opened by Office 2003/SP3? I keep working installations of Office 2000 and OpenOffice around for just these sorts of reasons... Opening very old docs in the latest versions can corrupt the docs under some circumstances.
Back-compatibility is a bitch.
> I think it should be pointed out that Microsoft is not alone in this approach. Apple has made it almost impossible to open old documents saved in AppleWorks of ClarisWorks in Pages...
That's a valid point.
This is a symptom of the approach used for SDLC, Software Development Life Cycle.
When old software is upgraded or new stuff developed, it is done on the latest and greatest OS and registry structures. Few vendors strive to guarantee that nothing will become obsolete.
I won’t say that Big Blue is an exception, but I will say that Big Blue is way, way, way better than most.
Wow... and I thought I was bad for keeping an old Win95 machine going.
These days I do stuff like that in VMs, though. The old OSes sometimes fail to load in newer PC hardware.
Alternately, a setting in properties could allow or disallow opening these older files... and not make the user go dumpster diving into the registry, with the potential to really screw things up, to make them accessible.
True. WIN/ME choked big time on a machine with 2.5 gig of RAM. Took me a bit of googling to find out how to make him see only a gig.
I have a lot of Word and Excel documents. How do you do a quick scan to determine which ones will have a problem?
That seems to be part of the problem. Some have done scans for modification dates that are prior to 1 January 1997... but that may not do it.
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