Those customers who haven’t already installed SP3 and have chosen to receive updates automatically will start receiving the service pack from February 27; although they will receive the update progressively, with not everyone receiving it on the same date, Microsoft said.
Microsoft made an announcement to this effect on Monday following several user complaints regarding security settings in Office 2003 SP3 that was released in September 2007. The settings blocked access to some of the older file formats.
The upcoming Windows Update contains numerous security- and stability- enhancements. Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 in particular has improvements to make Office 2003 work well with Windows Vista and other new Microsoft products.
It promises to give users greater control over which macros can run in Excel, as also patch identified security holes. It offers IT administrators new tools to protect against social engineering attacks.
Meanwhile, for those of you who don’t particularly fancy Office 2003 SP3 automatically installed on your computers, make sure not to set Microsoft Update to ‘Automatic’.
source:techtree