NEVER Forget these!!!
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:
Here is an explanation from MS... and a semi mea culpa...
http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/archive/2008/01/04/office-sp3-and-file-formats.aspx
| • | In Word 2007, if you trust the file that you want to open, you can open that file even if the file type is blocked by the registry. You can override the registry policy settings by moving the file to a trusted location. For more information about how to create, to remove, or to change a trusted location for files, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100319991033.aspx (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100319991033.aspx)
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| • | In Word 2003, there are no trusted locations. You can create an exempt location to override the registry policy settings. To create an exempt location, follow these steps:
|
I’ve installed OOo on my iMac 1.9 PPC machine over the weekend, just to try it out. I installed the X11 version.
It looks okay, very full featured, and I like the ability to save documents as a PDF. Documents print fine. One problem, though, is that it is very slow to open. It takes nearly 3 minutes.
Did I do something wrong during installation, or is the X11 version just slow?
Try NeoOffice, if they have a PPC version. It is Open Office dressed for Mac.
Update Microsoft has threatened to release a fix for an Office 2003 update that may well have the productivity suite work as intended once again.As reported earlier Service Pack 3 for Office takes the unprecedented step of barring access to files created with earlier versions of the product. Install the Service Pack and your stash of documents (the ones you may be keeping for legal reasons) are suddenly just so much wasted disk and tape space.
We are talking seriously restrictive measures here. Office offers no warnings, the SP cannot be rolled back and there are no options that an average end-user can take to fix the problem.
Yes, that does indeed mean the lack of a dialog box saying:
"I am a sentient human being. I can assess risk. I can spell ‘responsibility’ and even, occasionally, assume it. I really, really want/need to open this old Word document. So go ahead, make my day.”
Just:
It's not a bug . . . .
Microsoft did issue a registry hack but covered it with dire warnings about how dangerous hacking the registry can be.
The word draconian seemed appropriate, so we used it with Reed Shaffner, Microsoft Office Worldwide Product Manager. Very disarmingly, he agreed.
“Yes, I agree, it was too draconian.” he said. We hate it when Product Managers do that.
He then went on to say that in response to the user feedback, Microsoft plans to issue a new fix in the very near future. The fix will come in the form of a link that you can follow which will hack (sorry, modify) your registry for you so that the problem goes away. And we'll be providing that link as soon as possible.
Still, Shaffner was at pains to point out that using the fix leaves the machine open to the very vulnerability that the measure was designed to stop, so Microsoft would still advise people not to do this unless they have a very good reason.
He also supplied more information about the vulnerability. He said that the problem wasn’t in the file format as such; it was in the code that is used to parse these earlier files. We were just about to point out that this was Microsoft’s code (and, therefore Microsoft’s fault) but he beat us to it. We hate it when they do that as well.
So, zero out of ten for the heavy handed SP but grudging respect for actually listening to users and fixing the problem. ®
Update
Since we filed this, Microsoft has in fact managed to post the Office fixes. Travel over to this support site and look for the "How to enable blocked file types" heading.
UnblockWord.reg. Lovely.
A W98SE machine w/ Office 97 would be a decent fallback, too.
OpenOffice takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load on older machines; it takes considerable time even on a 2GHz Intel Core2 Duo. Runs fine, but the initial load of the libraries and whatnot is slow. I find it's best to leave it loaded (running in the dock) and just open/edit/close docs rather than load from scratch for each doc.
No. These problems might require you to simply import the registry copy that you exported before you started doing any editing on the Registry.
Or at the very worst, restore that image you made of your system last night.
You did export the Registry and take a snapshot of your system, didn't you?
But, in general, it sucks that MS has seen fit to remove this backwards compatibility. Security reasons? Yah. right.
Not sure why; on my WinXP I have a Quickstart icon in the system tray that I right click on and select which app I want -- then it opens fairly quickly, three seconds or so. I also have two versions of F@H running against my dual core Intel pushing my cpu up to 98%, but they don't impact my operations at all. My system is slow on booting up, but I know that's because I have a bunch of stuff setting up in the background. OK. I shut down the Quickstarter, and it does take a while to restart, so that may be it. There's a checkmark against "Load OpenOffice.org during system startup." Seems to have about 1.5Meg preloaded out of my 2GB memory.
From the data we have on file opens, very few users open files in these formats, so we decided to modify the default behavior to this safer approach.
Oh yeah. Great. Glad I use a hard to use operating system like Linux. LOL
Microsoft is hanging themselves as fast as Hillary.
One of the big reasons that IBM had to make their systems backward compatible was that their Customers banded together and demanded it. The S/360 was the start of that; most previous hardware changes made a lot of the system programming obsolete, and Blue's Customers realised that they needed a way to help themselves and pressure Blue to "Do the right thing!©" The Users Group SHARE had a big hand in that.
Even if you don’t intend to use it full time, OpenOffice is a handy thing to have on your computer. I’ve used it several times to save Office documents that Office couldn’t open. OOo opened them just fine and the files were readable by Office after I let OOo save them using the Office file formats.
$ounds like an opportunity for $omeone to create a commercial GUI application for changing the$e regi$try $etting$! :)
OpenOffice used to take forever to load on my system, but since I added a graphics card (to get support for 1440x900 display), it loads in considerably less time.
While MS should making turning the default off easier their explanation is fine. For years people have harped that MS needs to be more secure out of the box and now that they are taking steps towards that people complain again..
Registry? We Mac users don't need no stinkin' registry!
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