--==>> WOW -- WOODY's OFFICE WATCH <<==--
Weekly advice and commiseration from
Woody Leonhard, Certified Office Victim
28 August 2002 Vol 7 No 40
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Woody's Windows Watch, later this week, asks some privacy
questions that didn't make it into the FTC/Microsoft
agreement. Of course, the newsletters are free, as are all
the Woody's Watches. To subscribe to Woody's Windows Watch
with the same address that received this issue of WOW,
click here:
http://woodyswatch.com/windows/subscribe.asp
or mailto:www@woodyswatch.com.
1. Office XP Service Pack 2
2. Top Tips: Ah, but You CAN Do That in Outlook
3. When Goading is all that Works
4. Office and the IE "Critical" Updates
5. Yet Another Internet Explorer Security Hole
6. WordPerfect on HP Pavilions
7. Read Yahoo Mail in Outlook?
8. Yahoo - the Last Outlook Synchronizer
9. In Memory of Galen Rowell
10. Keep WOW Alive and Free
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1. OFFICE XP SERVICE PACK 2
We haven't heard many loud screams about problems with
Office XP Service Pack 2 as yet, but there are lots of
little "gotchas".
We'll have a full, traditional "Woody's Office Watch
Special Edition" covering Office XP SP 2 in the near
future. I urge you to wait until we give it a thorough
vetting before you install it on your production computers.
In the meantime, realize that you have to have Office XP
Service Pack 1 working before you can get Service Pack 2
installed, so if you haven't yet downloaded SP1, check out
our SP1 coverage at
http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n04 ,
and get SP1 going.
I've delegated the job of checking SP2 to Peter Deegan, his
punishment for doing such great expose's on previous SP's
over the years.
In the interim there are some important details about
patching Internet Explorer that you can't afford to miss.
Even if you haven't installed Office XP Service Pack 2 yet,
and don't intend to until we give it a "green light", it's
important that you manually update IE in one specific way.
Microsoft buried that little gem deep inside one of its
security bulletins. I talk about it below.
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2. TOP TIPS: AH, BUT YOU CAN DO THAT IN OUTLOOK
In WOW 7.37, I ran another big crop of "wish list" features
for the next version of Outlook.
Many of you WOWsers wrote to point out that it's possible
to mark a message as "Read" using Outlook's Rules Wizard -
providing you're running Outlook 2002 (the version in
Office XP). The checkbox appears in the "What do you want
to do with the message?" box, right where it belongs. It's
a new feature in Outlook 2002, and it works as advertised!
Even more of you wrote to say that you can create a new
Contact based on an existing one, by opening the Contact,
clicking Actions | New Contact from Same Company, and
typing in the new name. Outlook pulls across the company
name and address, and the business phone number. The File
As field is filled with the company name until you update
the record.
I, for one, would like to make it much easier to create a
new Contact based on an existing one (e.g., have the option
on the Toolbar, next to the Save and Close button; and make
it a choice when you right-click on a Contact in any View).
But it can be done, right now.
I still don't know of a way to specify wildcards in the
spam mail sender's list, but WOWser BillH had this
interesting idea: "Adding to the Junk Senders list from a
junk message adds the full address of the junk sender to
the list. However, the filter which the list supports will
also work using only a domain name. I've found that if I
periodically go into the list (look for "Junk Senders.txt";
on my Win 2000 machine, it's under C:\Documents and
Settings\"username"\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\),
and use Notepad to edit out the "; portion of
the addresses to get to just the domain names, that takes
care of a lot of the issues DB raises."
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3. WHEN GOADING IS ALL THAT WORKS
Three weeks ago, WOW 7.36
http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n36
warned you that Office XP Service Pack 2 was imminent. In
that issue, I wondered out loud "...if Office XP Service
Pack 2 will patch Internet Explorer? IE's rendering engine
has been the source of many (dare I say "most"?) major
security holes in Outlook. If SP-2 doesn't patch IE, it'll
be a bit like chinking the life boats on the deck of the
Titanic. If you know what I mean."
Last Tuesday, Microsoft released Office XP Service Pack 2.
Two days later, Microsoft delivered a big Internet Explorer
patch - coupled with a PR blitz so pervasive (and
effective!) that, before the week was out, almost every
publication around the world featured an in-depth report on
Microsoft's response to the latest security threats.
Well, there's more to the story than what made the evening
news. In spite of what you may have heard, Microsoft isn't
exactly patching the security holes as an altruistic
exercise for the benefit of its customers, and while the
company is certainly "disclosing critical security flaws,"
it's had a bit of a, uh, nudge from people who are more
than a bit upset at Microsoft's hole-patching history. I
could start ranting about Microsoft's head-in-the-sand
response to Chris Paget's "Shatter Attack"
http://security.tombom.co.uk/shatter.html , but I'll
confine myself to re-deifying Georgi Guninski.
Georgi Guninski, as many of you know, has a knack for
finding big, ugly security holes in Microsoft products. I
think it's fair to say that all of the brass (and many of
the workers) at Microsoft hate him because he gives the
'Softies a week or two to solve a problem and, if no
solution is forthcoming, Georgi has no problem at all
"going public" with his discoveries.
In the past six months, Georgi built up a big collection of
Office security problems (see www.guninski.com) which we've
followed here in WOW. In my opinion, Georgi's work - and
his willingness to blow the whistle - has done more to push
the flurry of security improvements in Office that we've
seen in recent months than any other outside stimulus.
Microsoft has released security patches that seem to
address Georgi's discoveries (e.g., the "April 25, 2002
Updates" and the "June 19, 2002 Updates" for various parts
of Office 2000 and Office XP), but Georgi has always
managed to find flaws in the patches. Have the 'Softies
finally fixed all of Georgi's holes? I don't know, but
given Microsoft's track record, it ain't likely.
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4. OFFICE AND THE IE "CRITICAL" UPDATES
There's an important - crucial - detail about the Office
Web Components security patch that Microsoft buried in its
MS02-044 Security Bulletin. I talked about it in my Windows
XP Newsletter earlier this week. Office Web Components are
programs that let Internet Explorer behave like Office - so
you can manipulate a spreadsheet from inside your Web
browser, for example. When you install Office XP Service
Pack 2, or the Office Web Components update (see below),
the installer replaces the old version of the Office Web
Components - the one with a bunch of huge security holes -
with a new, improved version.
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have any way to declare
the old version of the Office Web Components null and void.
(There's something called a "kill bit" that the installer
can't set - see the FAQ section of
http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bul
letin/MS02-044.asp
for details.) That means you could potentially be duped
into re-installing the old, insecure version of the Office
Web Components. If you've ever told Internet Explorer to
"Always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" in
response to a request to install a program on your
computer, it's possible for the old version of the Office
Web Components to be installed without your knowledge or
consent.
The solution? Tell Internet Explorer that it can't trust
Microsoft any more.
> In Internet Explorer, click Tools | Internet Options | Content
> In the Certificates section click Publishers | Trusted Publishers
> If you see Microsoft Corporation listed, click on it and click Remove.
By the way, those of you who have been looking for the
downloadable version of the Office Web Components (see
http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v7-n29
for an explanation of how and why Microsoft yanked OWC from
their Web site many months ago), will be relieved to know
that a new, improved, possibly less-security-uh-challenged
version is now available from the old download site,
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/owc10.aspx .
Here's what all of this means to you Office users.
Everybody needs to update their version of Internet
Explorer, right away. Even if you don't use IE as your Web
browser - even if you don't use any Web browser - Outlook
and Outlook Express and other Office components rely on IE.
The sins of the father are visited upon the son. Patch IE
or all of your Office fixes won't mean doodley squat. Get
to
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/q323759ie/default.as
p
before you do anything else. I talked about the Internet
Explorer holes and patches in this week's Woody's Windows
XP Newsletter.
Before you forget, set IE to DIStrust Microsoft, as noted above.
Office XP Service Pack 2 rolls up all the previous security
patches in Office XP, and (if I read between the tea leaves
correctly) also includes at least one additional patch that
tackles - perhaps cures - one of Georgi's longest-standing
security holes. If you use Office XP, you should plan on
installing Service Pack 2 as soon as we give it a "green
light".
Office 2000 doesn't have a new Service Pack (yet), so if
you use Office 2000, you need to download and install the
Office Web Components patch from
http://download.microsoft.com/download/office2000/Patch/owcupd/WIN98MeXP/EN
-US/owcupd.exe
Microsoft doesn't support Office 97 any more - and many of
Georgi's exploits don't work in Office 97 anyway - so there
isn't a whole lot that you O97 users can do.
At this point, Office and Internet Explorer have become so
intertwined that gaping security holes in one show up in
the other, and in all but the simplest situations the two
have to be patched in unison. Personally, I never got upset
about Microsoft building Internet Explorer "into the
operating system" - one of the anti-trust topics that's
been beaten to death. But having IE and Office joined in an
ongoing security death grip really gets me worried.
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5. YET ANOTHER INTERNET EXPLORER SECURITY HOLE
Want to see something scary? Create a file called
c:\jelmer.txt and type a few lines of text in it. Then hit
Jelmer Kuperus's site at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jkuperus/msieread.htm . Guess what?
Internet Explorer - whether it's had the latest "critical
updates" applied to it or not - can read the contents of
arbitrary files on your PC.
I keep mentioning these gaping security holes in WOW
because holes in IE can generally be exploited in email,
sometimes with a little tweak or two, thanks to Outlook's
reliance on the IE rendering engine.
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6. WORDPERFECT ON HP PAVILIONS
So what does the world's largest PC maker do when the high
price of Microsoft software drags down sales of its
bargain-basement computers?
It votes with its pocketbook.
Starting next month, every new HP Pavilion computer will
ship with Corel WordPerfect Productivity Pack - a
combination of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro that's a
scaled-down version of WordPerfect Office 2002. Pavilions
used to ship with Microsoft Works.
Forbes reports
http://www.forbes.com/home/2002/08/26/0826corel.html
that Corel hopes to draw 3,000,000 new users this year
because of the deal, and they further hope to entice 12% of
all those folks to upgrade to full-blown WordPerfect
Office.
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7. READ YAHOO MAIL IN OUTLOOK?
Those of you who have struggled with Outlook 2002's support
of Hotmail (the decidedly un-integrated separate folder
that doesn't do much, see
http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v6-n26 )
may be looking for an alternative. Yahoo has a decent free
email service (which was once plagued with
privacy/disclosure problems but now, I'm assured, ranks
among the more enlightened), but there's no way to retrieve
your Yahoo mail in Outlook, short of paying for "POP3
support".
Or is there?
There's a fascinating program called YahooPops, at
http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/ , that tricks Yahoo Mail
into behaving like a POP3 email server - and that's exactly
what you need to be able to handle the mail in Outlook.
YahooPops is still in beta, so only the strong-willed need
apply, at this point. But perhaps it's a glimpse into the
future?
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8. YAHOO - THE LAST OUTLOOK SYNCHRONIZER STANDING
Sue Mosher's Slipstick Web site, http://www.slipstick.com/,
is reporting the imminent demise of ReadySyncGo!, one of
the few Outlook/PDA Contact/Calendar synching services left
on the Web. If you use ReadySyncGo
http://www.readysyncgo.com/splash/default.asp , you
better retrieve your data before September 15. That's when
the site officially goes belly-up.
The last free Contact/Calendar synchronizing service that's
widely available is from Yahoo. To synchronize Contacts,
you have to log on at http://address.yahoo.com , then click
the button marked "Import/Export" in the upper right
corner, and then follow the instructions to milk a CSV
(comma-separated-value) file from Outlook, before uploading
it to Yahoo. The Calendar sync is at
http://calendar.yahoo.com - and they're both about to be
integrated with Yahoo Mail see
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/betatour.html .
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9. IN MEMORY OF GALEN ROWELL
You may not know his name, but I bet you know his photographs.
One of the finest outdoor photographers of all time, an
avid climber and traveler, Tibetan human rights activist,
and darn good writer to boot, Galen Rowell has been my
personal idol for more than a decade. He and his wife
Barbara died last week in a twin-engine turboprop plane
crash just south of Bishop, California, where they lived.
The International Campaign for Tibet has a memorial site at
http://www.savetibet.org/News/News.cfm?ID=1240&c=6 . The
picture that Galen took of the Potala Palace in Lhasa - one
of the most awe-inspiring photographs I've ever seen - is
on that Web page. I'll bet you've seen it, even if you
didn't know where it came from.
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10. KEEP WOW ALIVE AND FREE
If you like the no-nonsense style you see in this
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get one of my books!
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"Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP" with Ed Bott, Que
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"Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2000" with Ed Bott, Que
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"Woody Leonhard Teaches Office 2000", Que
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Woody's OFFICE Watch
Copyright 2002 by Peter Deegan. All rights reserved. ISSN 1328-1674.
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W-O-O-D-Y-S--O-F-F-I-C-E--W-A-T-C-H
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