IT admins run into trouble with Microsoft Office 2003 SP3

IT shops may be eager to download Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3), which includes many of the security enhancements found in the 2007 release, but don’t expect a smooth deployment process. Judging from the chatter of IT administrators on Shavlik Technologies’ Patch Management email forum, people are already running into problems.

Susan Bradley, a Microsoft MVP and IT administrator at Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun Accountancy Corp. in Fresno, Calif., forwarded a long list of issues IT pros need to watch out for, including these examples:

– After you install a Microsoft Office service pack, you are prompted unexpectedly to restart the computer.

– After you install Office 2003 SP3, an add-in, ActiveX control, or COM add-in may not work as expected in an Office 2003 program.

– After you install Office 2003 SP3, you may receive an error message when you try to create a new MAPI form in Outlook 2003.

– After you install Office 2003 SP3, attachments that contain the .gadget extension cannot be opened in Outlook 2003.

One annoyed IT pro wrote, “How do you release a service pack with as many known problems as that?????????”

Another asked, “So do we wait for SP4 to come out to fix the issues that SP3 created?”