Upon opening some previously created Word 2003 documents, users on our network are receiving the message:

The document 'Filename' caused a serious error the last time it was opened. Would you like to continue opening it? At which point the document can not be opened and the user is presented with the option to pull available unformatted text from the <ocument.

... or ...

Word stops responding completely and you have to end-task on Word.

Searching Microsoft will tell that you can remove the documents in question from the disabled list in Word. Indeed you can, but this simply removes that warning and the problem with the files continues to exist.

It may be worth noting that of all the files that have encountered this have been either a file that mail-merges with Excel or have tables in them.

I believe that this issue was caused by a recent Microsoft patch (either XP or Office). I have a laptop that was off of our network for 6 months and thus has not received Microsoft updates during that time. This machine is able to open all of these documents with no problem. That being said -- I have uninstalled the recent patches that went out on 5/8, and the documents are still not able to be opened.

Ideas ?