Greetings all,

I tried to help my mother In Law update Word by telephone, and had no
luck. It was a rough going over the phone, but it appears we were able
to do all except the final step(s).

When she clicked to start the update, she got a message in her browser
saying that she needed ActiveX turned on (OUCH). We ALL learned the
hard way about ActiveX, and no one in the family uses it anymore. In
fact, some have switched to Open Office.

Rather then get grandma up to speed on OO, we'd like to have her use
WORD as she is familiar with it and several other of the Office
programs.

Is there anyway to update Office (2003) without using an ActiveX
capable browser?? It was a very pricey software package, yet she has
never updated it.....It seems odd that there is no other way to update
WORD, but the help file doesn't give any other option(s).

Have I missed something, or should we just give up and convert her to
OO now rather than have her run WORD without updates?

Thanks,

Ari

Not sure what you mean by "learned the hard way about ActiveX",
because millions of users don't have problems with it. M-i-l
needs to use a web browser such as Internet Explorer 6 that
supports ActiveX if she updates from Microsoft's OfficeUpdate or
WindowsUpdate websites. Alternatively, if m-i-l knows what
updates are needed, then she can manually download the individual
updates and install them. It's a free country, and you and your
spawn are free to choose the software that best suits your needs,
comfort levels, and mental abilities.

wrote:

Greetings all,

I tried to help my mother In Law update Word by telephone, and had no
luck. It was a rough going over the phone, but it appears we were able
to do all except the final step(s).

When she clicked to start the update, she got a message in her browser
saying that she needed ActiveX turned on (OUCH). We ALL learned the
hard way about ActiveX, and no one in the family uses it anymore. In
fact, some have switched to Open Office.

Rather then get grandma up to speed on OO, we'd like to have her use
WORD as she is familiar with it and several other of the Office
programs.

Is there anyway to update Office (2003) without using an ActiveX
capable browser?? It was a very pricey software package, yet she has
never updated it.....It seems odd that there is no other way to update
WORD, but the help file doesn't give any other option(s).

Have I missed something, or should we just give up and convert her to
OO now rather than have her run WORD without updates?

Thanks,

Ari

On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:07:42 -0800, "garfield-n-odie [MVP]"
wrote:

Not sure what you mean by "learned the hard way about ActiveX",
because millions of users don't have problems with it.

Are you serious? You never heard of ActiveX problems, which can, worst
case....allow browser hijacking/redirection leading to identity theft,
lost credit and other unattractive social and monetary problems?

For us, the decision was easy, we simply stopped using IE, after
realizing there were viable options such as Firefox. No worry about
ActiveX, internet zone settings and list of exceptions.

I was concerned to learn that WORD update via the interment required
one to enable ActiveX in order to download updates to WORD. MIL paid
lots of money for it, and she has to compromise her security to
download updates??!! Really?

You can learn about ActiveX on the internet, there are quite a few
websites that explain the dangers. If you are really and genuinely
unaware of this issue, you should probably NOT be offering advice to
others::

We have used Pagemaker here because we are involved in Custom
Publishing, otherwise we'd be more current on WORD updating issues.

I'll try to download WORD updates manually to my non WORD capable and
Firefox browser based system. If we can download the files without
having WORD on our system, we can surely burn them to a CD and mail
them to grandma. She needs to have updates in order to protect her
security.

Within the last year, we stopped using Outlook, Outlook Express, IE,
Windows Messenger etc. Maybe it's time to suggest to grandma that WORD
should be replaced with OO. I'd prefer to keep her in WORD since she
already bought it though.

I'll see if I can find instructions on how to manually update Office
03 on microsoft.

GL to you.

Ari

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:07:42 -0800 from garfield-n-odie [MVP]
:
Not sure what you mean by "learned the hard way about ActiveX",
because millions of users don't have problems with it.

You're an MVP, and you don't know about the many security problems?
Wow!

Here's a paper by CERT on the risks:
http://www.cert.org/reports/activeX_report.pdf.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

That was my exact impression as well, not sure if the guy is a troll
or not. I'm new to this NG, so I don't know the trolls here.

I looked at the document you gave the link for. A bunch of it is
relevant to the OS, not necessarily to online browsing....but I was
stunned to see the far reaching implications of ActiveX. I had no idea
it was so deeply imbedded into the OS, I had thought it to be
primarily a browser/online issue.

I also found the date of the original document interesting......these
vunerabilities have existed since 2000 when the cert study was
done.....another eye opener.

I don't want to get thrown off the NG, so I'm going to try as much as
possible to stick to the original purpose of my post. But, thanks for
opening my eyes. We have a new system here and want to make it secure
BEFORE we start using it to do real work online....not after::

Regards,

Ari

Not sure what you mean by "learned the hard way about ActiveX",
because millions of users don't have problems with it.

You're an MVP, and you don't know about the many security problems?
Wow!

Here's a paper by CERT on the risks:
http://www.cert.org/reports/activeX_report.pdf.

Hi Ari,

You can download the updates from http://office.microsoft.com/downloads and not use the 'check for updates' option, but click down
to the updates section after selecting your version of Office. However, with the new Microsoft 'authentication' it may or may not
require a Control to be downloaded as well.

======
wrote in message ...
Greetings all,

I tried to help my mother In Law update Word by telephone, and had no
luck. It was a rough going over the phone, but it appears we were able
to do all except the final step(s).

When she clicked to start the update, she got a message in her browser
saying that she needed ActiveX turned on (OUCH). We ALL learned the
hard way about ActiveX, and no one in the family uses it anymore. In
fact, some have switched to Open Office.

Rather then get grandma up to speed on OO, we'd like to have her use
WORD as she is familiar with it and several other of the Office
programs.

Is there anyway to update Office (2003) without using an ActiveX
capable browser?? It was a very pricey software package, yet she has
never updated it.....It seems odd that there is no other way to update
WORD, but the help file doesn't give any other option(s).

Have I missed something, or should we just give up and convert her to
OO now rather than have her run WORD without updates?

Thanks,

Ari
--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends

Pricing and Packages for '2007 Microsoft Office System'
http://microsoft.com/office/preview