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Office Suites: Safeguard Your Apps

Office XP: Because of a flaw in the way that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint detect macros within files, you could open up a document from a malicious user and trigger its macros to run without your noticing anything. Office XP Service Pack 1 takes care of the security problem and enhances overall performance as well.

After that service pack was released, new security threats were discovered relating to Word and Excel macro options and to Web-browsing components. Office XP Service Pack 2 seals those holes and includes a number of other bug fixes and performance enhancements. SP2 does not include the fixes offered in SP1; install SP1 before grabbing SP2.

Note: If you use Outlook 2002 and it crashes after you install SP2, you need another patch. See " E-Mail Programs" for more details.

Office 2000: In Microsoft Office 2000, the macro features in Excel are particularly vulnerable to outside attackers. On top of that, Outlook and Outlook Express have a flaw that leaves your machine open to the Worm.Explore.Zip (Pack) virus. Get the Service Release 1a Update.

Following Microsoft's posting of SR-1a, additional security holes appeared on the scene, such as a problem in the way that Outlook handles e-mail attachments, and potential security problems with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and RTF files. Office 2000 Service Pack 3 includes all the security patches released after SR-1a.

Whether you're using Office XP or Office 2000, you may need to get the latest version of Microsoft Office Web Components. These tools come as part of Office XP, Office 2000, Money 2002, Money 2003, and other apps, and they are also available as a freestanding download from Microsoft's site. Early versions have security holes that could give a Web site unauthorized access to files on your PC. Go to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-044 for a link to the patch. If you've installed Office XP SP2, you don't need this fix.

Corel WordPerfect: According to Corel, there aren't any significant security fixes in the company's recent updates, Hot Patch 4 and Service Pack 3 for WordPerfect. The earlier Service Pack 2, however, permits WordPerfect Office 2002 to integrate with Entrust's PKI Server, which will increase your security if you're using that product.

If you use WordPerfect Office 2000, you might encounter a system error if you should attempt to open a password-protected file on a document management system. Installing the Office 2000 Hot Patch will restore your ability to use password-protected files in this situation.

Finally, WordPerfect Office 2000 Service Pack 4 enables WordPerfect to run in a safer, "restricted users" mode on Windows 2000 or Windows Terminal Server. The service pack is not available as a download; you need to request it from Corel customer service.

--Dylan Tweney

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