[Sesquipedalian Sam]

I have been doing some cleanup of old documents. I tried to open one
document and I got an error message about the filetype having been
created by an earlier version of Word and it being blocked by a
registry setting.

The message inside the box is:

"This error occurs if you try to open a Microsoft Office document and
the file type for that document has been blocked by a registry policy
setting. To help secure your computer, Microsoft or the administrator
of this computer implemented a registry policy setting that prevents
opening this type of file.
To open documents with this file type, disable the registry policy
setting. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article
922850."

Clicking on the hyperlink, I am taken to:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=922850

This contains a lot of complicated information about changing the
registry. I am reluctant to make registry changes.

Is there any downside to making these registry changes?

What's the best way to handle this situation?

I find this action by Microsoft very unfriendly. I have been using
Word since it first came out. I don't think it's my responsibility to
load and resave all of my old documents every time a new release of
Word comes out.

Is there a utility that will scan my hard disk, locate all documents
saved with unsupported versions of Word, and offer me the chance to
convert them?