Topic: DRM bites Office 2003 users

[Nemesis]

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Cannot Open Office 2003 Documents Protected with RMS

Starting on December 11, 2009, customers using Office 2003 will not be able to open Office 2003 documents protected with the Rights Management Service (RMS) or save Office 2003 documents protected with RMS. The following error message may be displayed when attempting to Open RMS Documents using Office 2003:

"Unexpected error occurred. Please try again later or contact your system administrator"

This symptom affects Office 2003 products used in conjunction with RMS, including Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPoint 2003 and Outlook 2003. It does not affect Office 2007.

We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we will provide customers a solution as soon as we can.   Any new updates and we will post the information here.
Published Friday, December 11, 2009 8:34 PM by The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering.

[Nemesis]

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The issue of the inability to open Office 2003 documents protected with RMS has now been resolved with a hotfix.　 You can obtain the hotfix by using the following locations.

Links to fix are at the site linked to above.