Thanks for the reply Macropod.

"IMHO whoever told you that has no idea what they were talking about. Office 2003 remains quite secure and is likely to do so for however long you keep your AV software updated. "

I agree, but the prevailing opinion in Japan, where my clients are located, seems to be that the termination of support for 2003 means that security is somehow compromised. I've tried unsuccessfully to convince them otherwise.

I'll try the registry modification in the KB article. And then I'll wait on in the naive hope that MS will one day produce an update that just fixes bugs and introduces useful new functions without destroying the really great features of earlier versions.