Office 2003 to leave Mainstream Support phase

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:16:00 GMT

The last Microsoft Office 2003 product was released nearly 5 years ago. Per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle, the Mainstream Support phase runs for 5 years after the release of a product. In accordance with this policy, Office 2003 will leave the Mainstream Support phase on April 14th, 2009. The Extended Support phase will continue for an additional 5 years, through April 8^th, 2014. During the Extended Support phase, Office 2003 will continue to receive security updates and paid support will continue to be available. Non-security hotfixes will be available only with purchase of an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement. For full details of the differences between the Mainstream and Extended Support phases, see the Microsoft Support Lifecycle website.

The ability of the Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter to protect its users against junk email, including malicious phishing emails, is dependent on the installation of regular updates. Because these updates are necessary for this feature to remain functional, the Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter will continue to receive updates with new junk email definitions through the end of the Extended Support phase.

Upcoming end of support for Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

David [Microsoft] — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:35:00 GMT

Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) was released nearly a year ago, on September 17th, 2007. Per the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy for service packs, when a new Office service pack is released, the previous service pack is supported for one year. This provides customers an opportunity to test and deploy the new service pack. In accordance with Microsoft’s lifecycle policy, Office 2003 Service Pack 2 will leave support on September 17th, 2008. This date is extended for security updates to include the second Tuesday of the following month. Any security updates released on or before the second Tuesday in October, October 14th, will support both Service Packs 2 and 3. Security updates released after October 14th will support only Service Pack 3. We encourage all customers to deploy Service Pack 3 as soon as possible to take advantage of the significant security benefits that it contains.

Office Sustained Engineering : Reminders

Office 2003 to leave Mainstream Support phase

Upcoming end of support for Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2)