January 11th ban hammer date for Microsoft Word: Off again. Kind of.

Not even 24 hours ago we heard the news that Microsoft lost their appeal to i4i — a small XML developers firm — and that the presiding judge decided to uphold the January 11th ban on Microsoft ’07. Yesterday the two most obvious choices for Microsoft were to pay up and forget about it or appeal again, risking losing more money and another court case. Microsoft however is choosing plan c. Plan C is simply selling new versions of Word ’03 and ’07 without the infringing and “little-used feature” according to Microsoft.

With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.

While Microsoft will escape the dreaded ban hammer on their bread and butter Office Suite, they will also still be responsible for a $240 million payment as awarded by the first judge and upheld by the second. That payment however is still up in the air as Microsoft has stated they are pursuing other legal options. We shall see…

Venture Beat

Finally, a fix for Office ’97/Windows 7 UAC woes.

Software from Microsoft is benefited by rather constant, frequent updates that keep your Windows software running the best that it possibly can. While I update/upgrade my hardware and software as often as I can, there are many out theme who fall more into the “casual use” category. For them, updating all the time isn’t necessarily that important.

With that said, users of Windows 7 whom installed Office ’97 (yes, that’s ’97 with a “9″) may have noticed as of late that editing UAC controls wasn’t working too well for you. Never fear, simple copy the code below into a fresh note in notepad and save as a .reg file. Save said file to your desktop then double click to install — selecting “allow/agree/yes” to the proceeding questions of course. An even more fitting solution: upgrade already. Office ’97 was old a full decade ago. Let’s keep with the times shall we?

I’m actually curious as to why or what would keep consumers from upgrading their now ancient Office ’97 installs. Any Office ’97 users care to chime in? Don’t worry, I won’t judge you…much…

**Copy and paste into Notepad, save as .reg file and then run.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}]
@=”IOleDocument”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”6″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC5-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}]
@=”IOleDocumentView”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”16″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC6-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}]
@=”IOleDocumentSite”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”4″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC7-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}]
@=”IEnumOleDocumentViews”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”7″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC8-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC9-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”6″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCC9-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCCA-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”5″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCCA-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}]
@=”IOleCommandTarget”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\NumMethods]
@=”5″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{B722BCCB-4E68-101B-A2BC-00AA00404770}\ProxyStubClsid32]
@=”{A4A1A128-768F-41E0-BF75-E4FDDD701CBA}”

Ars Technica > Microsoft Support