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Microsoft Company. Monday gave users of its Office 2003 application suite a 30-day warning that it will begin approaching the software’s Service Pack 3 via Microsoft Update next month. The notice go after a dustup earlier this month over new security settings in Office 2003 SP3 that blocked right of entry to a swath of older file formats. After users protest on the company’s hold up forums, and a software rival asked why its files were being barred, Microsoft apologized and posted work-around to make it easier for users to unclog the formats.

Microsoft proclaims that it would add Office 2003 SP3 to its Microsoft Update listings beginning Feb. 27. Microsoft Update, a friend service to Windows Update, downloads patches and other fixes for the operating scheme as well because a number of the company’s applications, particularly Office. “Those customers who have not by now installed SP3 and that have chosen to be known updates automatically will start to receive the service pack as early as February 27,” a Microsoft lecturer said today in an e-mail. “[But] the sharing through [Microsoft Update] is a gradual process and so not every client will see the service pack on February 27.”

Microsoft Update and Windows Update take their instructions from the client PC’s Automatic Updates settings; those let users state whether updates will be mechanically downloaded and installed, downloaded but not installed, or not downloaded. Users who do not wish to automatically improve their copies of Office 2003 must set Automatic Updates to the second or third option above.

Microsoft’s Office and Update teams said that the warning is in keeping with a policy that debuted with Office 2007 SP1, when the company promised that it would give users a 30-day warning before turning on an routine service-pack update. In December, Reed Shaffer, worldwide product manager for Office, promise that Microsoft would not use Microsoft Update to deliver Office 2007’s SP1 for at least three months, perhaps longer.

“This policy seems to have worked really well with SP3 because it gave the market plenty of time to evaluate the service pack, gave us time to address concerns, and now we can push it to the hundreds of millions of users who depend on us to stay them safe,” said the two teams in a joint posting to a company blog.

Office 2003 SP3 was reveal by Microsoft last September and has been obtainable for downloading from the company’s Web site since then.