Microsoft this week released a critical update to fix a bug with its newly released Office 2003 suite.

The flaw revolves around a problem that occurs when users try to open or to save a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 file, Word 2003 file, or Excel 2003 file that includes an "OfficeArt shape" previously modified and saved in an earlier version of Microsoft Office.

Attempts to open such a file in Office 2003 can result in a variety of problems. These include: failure of a file to open completely, a file may be corrupted, a file may open but omit content or an error message might be generated.

Microsoft has released separate patches for client and administrative versions of Office 2003. For ease of deployment we trust that end users do not need the original disk to run the update, a snag which hit numerous people trying to fix a recent, unrelated security problem with earlier versions of Office.

Microsoft’s advisory on this week's Office 2003 software bug, which is not security related, can be found here. ®

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