After all the government kerfuffle over the last couple years about moving to an open format for office documents (because proprietary formats could be discontinued by the vendor at any time, rendering documents stored in them unreadable), I’m shocked to read that after the latest Office 2003 update, Office can no longer access older format files.

Is nobody home at Microsoft?! This is exactly why people wanted to move to an open file format in the first place! Are they trying to get people to abandon Microsoft Office? Or do they just think that they’re so successful that no one will dare do without it? (News flash for them: a lot of people, including me, have moved to OpenOffice for our modest office document needs. The last version of MS Office I bought was Office 97, immediately after it came out, and it was ridiculously expensive even with a large student discount.)

There’s a work-around that will allow Office 2003 to read the older format files again, and it doesn’t look too difficult for someone who’s used to messing around with the Windows Registry, but most people aren’t.