Expert warns businesses of post-Office 2003 era consequences

Expert warns businesses of post-Office 2003 era consequencesWellington, Mar. 10 - As Microsoft gears up to end its support for Office 2003 and Windows XP in the coming month, an expert has issued warnings for businesses who could potentially lose access to their Office suite content.

Vice president of the global non-profit Information Systems Audit and Control Association, Marc Vael, said that a lot of companies would have to update their whole office suite, which requires an additional investment that they probably didn't foresee this year.

According to stuff. co. nz, Vael further said that many companies discovered that they couldn't open PowerPoint files and even some old Word files in newer office suits such as Microsoft Office 365.

He explained that the problem with Word files tends to occur if they had already been converted once from even older versions.

Vael noted that companies generally don't have the manpower to manually convert files one-by-one to standards such as PDF and if there is not enough support from Microsoft, this could do a lot of damage not just to Microsoft but also to the technology industry as a whole.

Although Microsoft has assured that it would roll out software tools that would make it easier to automatically convert Office 2003 files to newer environments, but the software maker didn't indicate whether they would be free or how they would be delivered.

Microsoft officially announced that it was going to end its support to the older OS and Office suite version on April 8, in a bid to lead users to the newer Windows 8 and Office 365. (ANI)