M$ Office SP3 Planned Obsolence

[P5-133XL]

M$ Office SP3 is unacceptable. Basicly, M$ killed the useage of some old file formats for "Security Reasons" leaving people with data in those formats having to manually modify registry keys to access their old data.

 

[ddrueding]

I didn't see in the article which file types are affected? Would Office 2000 docs be locked out? Office XP?

 

[Chewy509]

From what I understand, it's Word 95/97 and lower, and other suites like Word-Perfect, Works, etc.

MS seems to get more clueless in regards to customers and their requirements each day, instead feeding their own agenda...

 

[ddrueding]

I agree that it's stupid, but those apps are 10+ years old. How many real-world people is this going to affect?

 

[Will Rickards]

This just for office 2003 correct? Or for office 2007 as well?

 

[LunarMist]

What about my ancient .txt files? Are they an obsolete format too?

 

[ddrueding]

I still use quite a few .txt files, but they open in notepad by default. I don't even have MS Office (any version) installed on my workstation anymore.

 

[LunarMist]

I still use quite a few .txt files, but they open in notepad by default. I don't even have MS Office (any version) installed on my workstation anymore.

You are an independent contractor, correct? Most of the larger US-based institutions are heavily saddled with the MS office. Some of us have no choice but to use whatever is provided.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm loving Google Docs. All my clients are still on MS Office, and I send/receive everything in .doc or .xls to remain compatible. I just wish there were an easy way to send a google doc directly from my GMail account as a .doc or .xls.

 

[Chewy509]

I agree that it's stupid, but those apps are 10+ years old. How many real-world people is this going to affect?

You might be surprised, I still have Word for Windows v2.0 docs about from my final year at school...

However I could live without them, but most companies will feel it. Here is Australia, taxation documents must be kept for 7 years minimum, anything related to pharmaceutical is 10+ years or indefinite if a registered drug with the TGA (The Australian equivalent to the FDA), especially if the drug is on the market. Admittedly a lot of that stuff will be paper based, however having electronic copies of XLS data embedded in a DOC document can be handy.

Same for law, medical records/documents, etc. They all have time spans of at least 5+ years...

The company I work for has been around for over 15years, and we still have access to original software design documentation for the DOS based systems... (Thankfully it's most *.txt or RTF).

I guess the other problem would be trying to recover DDS-2 or Traven media in the first place to get the docs, but reading the document shouldn't be of any concern...

PS. As a side note, most of my documents produced now are *.txt or converted to HTML for long term storage. (I'm using StarOffice 8 now).

 

[Mercutio]

There are many tens of thousands of law offices that are still using WordPerfect 6 or even 5. Wordperfect and PDF are the only acceptable formats for electronic court submission in Indiana, and from experience most lawyers think of PCs as typewriters with TVs on them ("What do you need another computer for? That one is only twelve.)
I know some folks who still use Lotus 123, too.

 

[Howell]

Wordperfect and PDF are the only acceptable formats for electronic court submission in Indiana, and from experience most lawyers think of PCs as typewriters with TVs on them ("What do you need another computer for? That one is only twelve.)

Tennessee too. Amen on the rest.

 

[LunarMist]

I found quite a number of Excel and Word files from 2002 and earlier on my work computer. I hope they don't "upgrade" Office 2003 from SP2 to SP3.

 

[ddrueding]

You could always do the reg hack mentioned or open and re-save your files before they patch...

 

[Mercutio]

Or not bother to install the update...

 

[ddrueding]

Lunar hinted that he is in a managed environment. I don't think he will have the choice.

 

[Tannin]

I agree that it's stupid, but those apps are 10+ years old. How many real-world people is this going to affect?

A hell of a lot of people, Dave. On an Australia-only basis, many thousands. Extrapolate that to a worldwide figure and we are talking tens of millions. Which, of course, Microsoft know better than anyone.

This is evil empire conspiracy action of the worst sort, you need have no doubt about it whatever. The only thing Microsoft need to to ally any and all security issues with oldfile formats is disable macro functionality when opening them. Finito. End of story.

For this,they should be prosecuted immediately. Not even an American court could find them anything other than guilty.

 

[ddrueding]

Not even an American court could find them anything other than guilty.

I think you (under?)estimate our courts...

 

[MaxBurn]

I read an update somewhere that they are backing away from blocking the old file formats in response to the uproar.

 

[mubs]

They've eaten crow. Downloadable .reg files that restore the ability to open files, and downloadable .reg that put the restrictions back in place, both by application type (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.).

Link is here (scroll down to Method 1).