Office 2008 exposes restricted folders

Posted on 25 Jan 2008 at 09:27

Early adopters of Microsoft's Office 2008 suite have encountered "serious" ownership and font problems, according to MacFixit.

Citing a report by Mac consultant Joel Bruner, the website says that the Office 2008 installation package incorrectly sets the owner of several files it installs to user ID 502, giving that user full read/write access to Library and Applications folders.

This occurs whether ID 502 even exists, if they do then they are given full administrator (ID 501) rights to the folders, regardless of their privileges for the whole system.

A separate report complains of "significant font display issues", including the letter C being displayed as A. As it notes, "This a very serious problem since Word may display mission critical text such as codes, passwords or serial numbers incorrectly."

Office's Word applications is also said to be incompatible with Leopard's Spaces feature. Issues reported to MacFixit include files formatted in the new .docx format refuding to be dragged into a new space, preferring to snap back to their original location.

Responding to the ID 502 permissions issue, Microsoft said that it is aware of the problem.

Author: Simon Aughton

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