Are your Office 2003 applications crashing or behaving weird? If so, probably you need to update them to the latest update fixes from Microsoft office online update. The last update pack from Microsoft is SP3. to check if its already installed on your computer, open any office application, and go to “Help” on the menu bar and select “About Microsoft Office xxx” if you have SP3 already, it should look like the image below.SP3

If you are not running office SP3, and you don’t use Microsoft Access for anything, there is nothing impeding from updating. For some reason Access developers recommend to hold back before installing SP3.

To update, using Internet Explorer go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/maincatalog.aspx and click on “update office” run the validation check and install the update, depending on your internet connection speed, it can take awhile to download.

SP3 blocks some old file formats, you need to add some registry keys to open those files. Microsoft has a workaround for this at their knowledge base site at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938810/en-us but as always their workarounds are hard to follow, that;s why I have created a zipped file to automatically enter those keys for you. download at the end of the post.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileOpenBlock]
“LotusandQuattroFiles”=dword:00000000
“DifandSylkFiles”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint\Security\FileOpenBlock]
“FilesBeforePowerPoint97″=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint\Security\FileSaveBlock]
“Converters”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Security\FileOpenBlock]
“FilesBeforeVersion”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Graphics Filters\Import\CDR]
“Enabled”=dword:00000001

download the zipped file here