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Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) Issues

 

After installing Office 2003 SP3, you may experience one or more of the following issues:

 

  1. 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.
    • EXTENSIONS: .wk1, .wk4, .wj3, wk1 FMT, .wks, .wk3, wk3 FM3, .wj2, .wq1, .fm3, .wj1 - .dif, slk - .ppt, .pot, .pps and .ppa '97.
    • For more information http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810/
  2. You are unexpectedly prompted to restart the computer.
  3. When you start an Office 2003 program, the functionality of an add-in, an ActiveX control, or a COM add-in is reduced, or, the functionality is blocked in some scenarios.
  4. The error message "contact the administrator" will appear when you try to create a new MAPI form in Outlook 2003.
  5. If you try to open an attachment that has the .gadget extension in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, the attachment does not open. A gadget file contains executable code that could potentially harm your computer. Therefore, .gadget attachments have been disabled in Outlook 2003 SP3.
  6. The Fast Saves feature in Word 2003 no longer functions after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3.
  7. When you run the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program, you may experience the following issues:
    • The default printer driver, such as the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer printer driver, is set to the TIFF output format.
    • The ability to save a .tif file by using JPEG compression is no longer available.
    • .Tif files and .mdi files are no longer associated with Microsoft Office Document Imaging. Additionally, these files no longer open in Microsoft Office Document Imaging by default.
    • For more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938813/
  8. You can no longer open files that you could open before you installed Office 2003 SP3. When you try to open these files in Microsoft Office Excel 2003, in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, or in Microsoft Office Word 2003, you receive an error.
  9. You cannot open Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 Workbook files that contain Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros in Microsoft Office Excel 2003.
  10. When you save an Office file, the version number of Office is no longer saved in the properties of the document.

Updated: 9/28/07