Oops… Microsoft re-issues Excel patch

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Saturday, 20 January 2007

Uh-oh… Microsoft has needed to “patch a patch” so users of Chinese, Japanese and Korean versions of Excel could use the software without issues.

Last week Microsoft released a series of critical patches to plug holes in its Windows and Office software packages.

Unfortunately for users of eastern language editions of Excel 2000, they have needed to re-issue the patch to fix a bug that the original patch introduced, as last week’s patch rendered Excel 2000 files in Chinese, Korean and Japanese impossible to open.

According to Microsoft, "While the original version of this security update for Excel 2000 does protect against all vulnerabilities discussed in the bulletin, it does not correctly process the phonetic information that is embedded in files that are created by using Excel in the Korean, Chinese, or Japanese executable mode.”

Users of other versions of Excel are unaffected at this stage.

The patch is known as MS07-002. This is not the first time Microsoft has had to re-issue patches, with one patch in August 2006 needing to be re-released three times.

So, while Microsoft is taking security as seriously as they can, they need to redouble their efforts to not only avoid the embarrassment of re-patching, but any unnecessary inconvenience to their customers.
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