Microsoft Word

How to keep Word from loading dangerous RTF files

Microsoft Subnet — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:44:14 -0400

Even if your users are completely trained to never open Word files with funky extensions, dangerous documents can come disguised with a friendly ".doc" extension. The May Patch Tuesday included an update that fixed a hole in Word relating to malicious RTF and HTML files, says a post in the Microsoft Security Vulnerability Research & Defense blog. However, if your users don't use, or rarely use, Word to open RTF or HTML documents, you may be better off blocking those files from loading in Word altogether.

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Word 2007 documents don't meet OOXML standard

Microsoft Subnet — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:15:48 -0400

Now that Microsoft has gotten Office Open XML (OOXML) accepted as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), it has found itself in an interesting dilemma. Changes were made to OOXML at the ISO ballot resolution meeting and because of this, Office 2007 documents no longer conform to the current standard (ISO/IEC 29500). So says Alex Brown, leader of the ISO group responsible for maintaining the OOXML standard, in his blog.

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Vista Update Craters Microsoft Word

Mitchell Ashley — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:31:17 -0500

I came downstairs this morning to find my Vista computer applying fixes and then rebooting. Yesterday six new updates were installed automatically by Windows Update.

Since that update, Microsoft Word no longer functions properly. Clicking a .doc document results in Word starting but not opening the file. Dragging a file into the open Word application window will open the file, but the scroll bars do not function. Eventually without too much effort Word will simply crash and then restart itself. Even just closing Word can cause it to crash.

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