[dayglored]

> 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.

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.

[Swordmaker]

I've been reading farther and it looks as if MS did deliberately block some older file formats but later ones are still active. The problem is changing ANY access to a file format with an automatic update without notifying the user of the change. 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.

"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.

[Swordmaker]

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...

[Swordmaker]

It seems to me that if these file types are unsecure, even after being scanned by various anti-virus ware, that MS could have still allowed their opening with a pop-up warning that they may be compromised... and let the user decide to open them anyway if they are sufficient value.

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.