With the Office 2007 System out the door since January 30, Microsoft is now getting ready for the release of the third service pack for Office 2003. Or at least this conclusion can be drawn from a download made available by the Redmond company on July 24. Office 2003 Service Pack 3 Administrative Template (ADM), OPAs, and Explain Text Update is a 390 KB executable file containing: "updated Group Policy Administrative Template files, OPA files, and an updated Microsoft Excel workbook that lists the Administrative Template policy settings and OPA settings," according to the description of the download.

The fact of the matter is that a refresh to Office 2003 is quite overdue. The last time that Microsoft introduced a service pack for Office 2007's predecessor was in 2005, with Office 2003 SP2. The company did deliver the Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) for Office 2003 at the end of May, but ORKSP3AT is also pointing to the fact that Office 2003 SP3 is just around the corner, according to Bink. Of course that this is all speculation at this point and that Microsoft has failed to confirm such a scenario.

Office 2003 SP3 Administrative Template (ADM), OPAs, and Explain Text Update is designed to replace the version released for Office 2003 SP2 and includes: "policy settings that provide the ability to block file format settings to prevent users from opening or saving specific file types and file formats in Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, and Microsoft Office Word 2003. And an updated Excel 2003 workbook (Office 2003 Group Policies.xls) that describes policy settings listed in the various Administrative Template and OPA files. It supports changes to the Office 2003 SP3 policy settings," Microsoft stated.

The download is not supported on Windows Vista, and meant only for users of Windows 2000; Windows 2000 Advanced Server; Windows 2000 Professional Edition; Windows 2000 Server; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP; Windows XP Professional Edition.