Office SP3 removes TIF and TIFF registered file type extensions

[John]

All,

After testing Office SP3 on XP SP2 machines, I found it removes the TIF and
TIFF registered file type extensions.

I sat in on the TechNet WebCast yesterday about Office SP3 and asked them
about this and they said MODI (Microsoft Office Document Imaging) has been
changed to match Office 2007. They would not answer me as to how we deal with
this delema in Office 2003, or what will be the TIF and TIFF effect in Office
2007.

I can bring the file association back with a simple script using ftype and
assoc, but is there another way? Will there be a subsequent patch to follow
the Office SP3?

It may be a while before we go to Office 2007, and when we do, will the TIF
and TIFF registered file type extensions exist? If not, when a user opens a
TIF or TIFF file, having Office 2007 installed, will the TIF and TIFF file
open? If so, what application default other tham MODI?

Thank you,
John

 

[EdN_OPKS]

An possible side effect? With SP3 installed, both "Microsoft Office Document
Imaging" and "Microsoft Office Document Scanning" utilities fail to function!

Ed

 

[Bernard Welmers]

Well here is one more vote saying MS was silly with SP3 for Office 2003 Pro.

Most of the users in my network use MS Office Document Imaging to view faxes
that come into our network but now it has died on all the comptuers.

Thanks for the problems MS

Well I think I found a fix to it. The registry key for HKCR\.TIF and .TIFF
the (Default) value needs to say MSPaper.Document (which is the default on my
MS Office 2007 machine as well - and is the default before SP3 was installed
on my Office 2003 machines).

This corrected the issue on the computer I tried it on. Now to publish it to
my whole organization. I wish there was an easy way to do that.

Bernard Welmers

 

[John]

As per a couple Web casts I attended, MS says the following:

1) They removed the TIF and TIFF file associations from Vista due to a
security threat from these two files below that work with the Kokak Imager
that came with W2K and is on XP (isn't on Vista). They decided to remove them
with the Office SP3 also:
a) kokakimg.exe
b) kodakprv.exe

2) Along came patch 923810 which fixes the security threat of these 2 files.
If this patch is installed, which came out in September, you can safely use
the Kodak Imager to view the TIF and TIFF files.

3) They don't explain how to put the TIF and TIFF file extensions back, but
explain you can associate all files that were TIF and TIFF to MDI and they
will open without a problem.

4) I was able to re-associate my TIF and TIFF file extensions back into my
XP by running the following in a bat file (maybe run it in your login script,
etc.). There are four lines which I'll specify:
Line 1: ftype MSPaper.Document="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
Shared\MODI\11.0\MSPVIEW.EXE" "%1"
Line 2: assoc .tif=MSPaper.Document
Line 3: ftype MSPaper.Document="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
Shared\MODI\11.0\MSPVIEW.EXE" "%1"
Line 4: assoc .tiff=MSPaper.Document

The gotcha is when will the TIF and TIFF file extensions get blown away
again. After the next set of Windows Updates? You'll need to watch your
machines carefully.

Hope this can help everyone too.

John