Comments on: OOXML: Forced Upgrades, Forced Obsolescence

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:33:26 +0000

By default, only documents earlier than Word 6.0 is desparated for now.

I notice that Groklaw ‘corrected’ this mistake by citing a newer article that speaks about the problem and explores the issue in greater depth. As I said, the inaccuracy comes from the quote.

By: Yuhong Bao

Yuhong Bao — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:06:30 +0000

But you are right that this registry key can be used to obsolete any old format.

By: Yuhong Bao

Yuhong Bao — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 20:46:57 +0000

By default, only documents earlier than Word 6.0 is desparated for now.

By: kkgv

kkgv — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:23:09 +0000

How about pulling your mis-informed article then? Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a known (eet), pseudonymous, nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.

By: 5fc435

5fc435 — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:33:17 +0000

How about if you 'pull' your mis-informed blog-entry then? Note: comment has been flagged for arriving from a known (eet), pseudonymous, nymshifting, abusive Internet troll that posts from open proxies and relays around the world.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:40:55 +0000

I merely quoted other sources and something did raise my brow when I saw Office 97 mentioned because this did not align with the succinct Slashdot report. Thanks for giving a more accurate assessment of this. I think you should inform PJ as well if you haven’t.

By: Stephane Rodriguez

Stephane Rodriguez — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 06:23:48 +0000

Bad research Roy, Groklaw got it wrong. It is not true that Word 97 files get deprecated. If that were true, that would indeed be worth news given the amount of such files out there, but that is just not the case.

If you re-read the MS support article, it’s very clear : “All Word files that have a version number that is less than but not equal to Word 6.0 for Windows are blocked from opening.”.

Just for the record, Word 6.0 was the version before Word 95. So not only Word 97 files are not blocked (Word 97 files are derived from Word 6.0 files with new records), Word 95 files are not blocked and Word 6.0 files are not blocked either.

Just in case you ask, I just did the test, and it confirms the above.

What Microsoft tries to do is warn when you are saving to old file versions such as Word 6.0. There is a dialog box which probably Microsoft thinks is scary enough to deter users from proceeding. But that’s not blocking at all. And what I’m talking about here is saving back. Reading an old Word 6.0 file works just fine in Word 2003 SP3.