Microsoft Fixes Office 2003 Lockout Error

The company had apparently forgotten to extend the expiration date of the digital certificates used to control access.

This past weekend, Microsoft fixed a bug that locked out Office 2003 users from accessing documents protected with the company’s Rights Management Services (RMS).

“Apparently, Microsoft forgot to extend the expiration date of the digital certificates used to control access to sensitive Office 2003 documents,” writes Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer.

“All Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook documents from the Office 2003 suite that had been locked with RMS were unavailable as of Dec. 11,” Keizer writes.

Click here to read the Computerworld story.