905726 You are unexpectedly prompted to restart the computer after you install an Office service pack or an Office update

938814 The functionality of an add-in, an ActiveX control, or a COM add-in is reduced, or the functionality is blocked after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

938816 Error message when you try to create a new MAPI form in Outlook 2003: “contact the administrator”

938811 Attachments that contain the .gadget extension cannot be opened in Outlook 2003 after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

938808 The Fast Saves feature in Word 2003 no longer functions after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

938813 You may experience issues when you run the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

941636 You receive an error message when you try to open a file or to save a file after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3

938806 You cannot open Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 Workbook files that contain Visual Basic for Applications macros in Excel 2003 after you…

Microsoft® Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) represents a major evolution in security for Office 2003. It further hardens the Office suite against potential attacks and other security threats. This service pack also includes fixes that have been previously released as separate updates for Office 2003.

You can get specific information about this update in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (923618): Description of Office 2003 Service Pack 3.

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A third service pack for Office 2003, promising improved security and enhanced compatibility with Windows Vista, Office 2007, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows SharePoint Services, will be available starting today (18 september) Microsoft officials say.

You can learn about and download Office 2003 SP3 from Microsoft’s Office Update or Microsoft Update pages, or just navigate directly to the free download. (These links aren’t live as of this writing, and the Microsoft spokesman who e-mailed me late today didn’t know exactly when they’d go live, but 6 a.m. PDT was his best guess. But don’t complain to me if they don’t work then–just give it a few hours.)

The download will be 120MB for the U.S. version and “no larger than 140MB” for other languages, the spokesman wrote. Office 2003 customers who use Microsoft’s AutoUpdate feature will be notified of SP3’s availability “over the next few weeks,” the spokesman wrote.

SP3 appears to address a variety of generally minor annoyances and bugs across the suite. Some examples:

With the update installed, if an Office 2003 user packages a PowerPoint presentation created in Office 2007, and the presentation is then re-opened in…