14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft announced that the third service pack for Office 2003 will be made available for download today. According to the Redmond company, Office 2003 SP3 is designed to bring to the table enhanced security and improved compatibility with a range of products, but essentially with Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows SharePoint Services. But one important aspect of the refresh is the fact that Microsoft has focused on bridging Office 2003 with Office 2007 in terms of compatibility. And in this context, the third service pack for Office 2003 is delivered some eight months after Office 2007 was made available on January 30, 2007.
According to the Redmond company, the download for Office 2003 will weigh in at approximately 120 MB for the English version. However, Microsoft revealed that even for the additional supported languages the service pack would no go over 140 MB. As of yet, the actual information and download for Office 2003 SP3 has not gone live. In the upcoming weeks, all current Office 2003 users will receive notifications of the availability of the service pack through AutoUpdate.
Outside of the evolution in compatibility and insecurity, Office 2003 SP3 contains fixes for a variety of minor issues impacting general functionality. No less than 450 flaws will be resolved with Office 2003 SP3. But one of the major changes that will affect user workflow is the fact that Microsoft has decided to disable the "fast save" functionality in Office 2003 Word. The feature works by saving only the changes in a Word document from the last time it was saved, rather than writing the whole item to the disk over and over again. Microsoft explained killing off the fast save feature as a need to reduce the risk of exposing confidential information.
In a large sense, Office 2003 and Office 2007 are in the same position as Windows Vista and Windows XP. Microsoft is currently cooking the first service packs for both Vista and Office 2007, while it prepares Office 2003 SP3 for launch later today and readies Windows XP SP3 for the first half of 2008.