Microsoft has released Service Pack 3 for Office 2003. It will be included in the Automatic Update system at some point in the next few weeks, but I don’t expect it to be installed automatically – I haven’t seen it confirmed but normally a service pack will require some affirmative OK click on a license agreement.
Microsoft service packs cover a lot of ground – all the security updates and patches since the last service pack, plus bug fixes and occasionally some new features or a more thorough overhaul of the program code. If you’re curious, this page has links to exhaustive lists of the minutiae covered by this service pack. Microsoft’s track record with service packs for the last few years has been pretty good; I’d suggest you install this with confidence.
There are some expected side effects on this page, but they’re not going to affect very many people; I don’t see anything that I expect my clients to run into. There are some additional issues and Knowledge Base articles linked here, but again nothing that should cause you to put this off.
No rush, but go ahead and install this when prompted!
