Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 Won't Open Old Files

Microsoft rolled out the third service pack to Office 2003 last September, and while it's been generally fine for most users, it came with a surprise payload that no one had been expecting and took all this time to truly come to light. Namely, Office 2003 no longer supports old versions of Office files (predating Office 97), meaning you can no longer open them after the service pack has been installed. Old Lotus 1-2-3, Quattro, and Corel Draw files are also affected.

Per a note on Microsoft's web site (which was posted a month ago but only discovered by most of us today), "these file formats are blocked because they are less secure. They may pose a risk to you."

Microsoft does offer a fix for this behavior: a rather complex series of registry modifications that power users will feel comfortable making but that will likely completely baffle novice users and will take the better part of your coffee break either way. (The full instructions are outlined in the "note" link in the previous paragraph.) There appears to be no other way to re-enable the opening of these old file formats.

Wired offers a considerably simpler alternative that I won't argue with: Install OpenOffice instead.

For the record, Office 2007 behaves the same way, and I don't believe there's any workaround at all to allow it to open file formats older than Office 97.

LINK: Microsoft Office 2003 Abandons Support for Older File Formats