Business
Office for Mac bug bites
A potentially embarrassing bug that could reveal passwords, URLs and document locations has surfaced in Macintosh versions of Office.The bug can reveal extraneous information when Excel, Word and PowerPoint files are opened in a format other than their native format -- such as Windows NotePad or ASCII -- according to the BugNet Web site.
A potentially embarrassing bug that could reveal passwords, URLs and document locations has surfaced in Macintosh versions of Office.
The bug can reveal extraneous information when Excel, Word and PowerPoint files are opened in a format other than their native format -- such as Windows NotePad or ASCII -- according to the BugNet Web site.
One user told BugNet he discovered information that was months old in the documents when he opened them in another format. That's because the Mac OS does not completely erase files, so leftover data may get mixed up with Word files.
Microsoft has posted a patch for the bug for users of Office for Windows 95, according to BugNet, but the company has not made a fix available for Word 98 for the Mac.
Microsoft officials were not immediately available for comment.