A client just had a nasty little issue with Rights Management Server today: it stopped working. Yeah, that’s a pretty bad issue. As it turns out, anyone with RMS and Office 2003 will have this same experience. From the KB:
Starting on December 11, 2009, customers using Office 2003 will not be able to open Office 2003 documents protected with the Active Directory Rights Management Service (AD RMS) or Rights Management Services (RMS). Customers will also not be able to save Office 2003 documents protected with AD RMS/RMS. Cause: The issue has been identified as an Office 2003 certificate expiration issue.
That is definitely not awesome. Luckily there is a hotfix link in the KB article that resolves the issue. If you don’t want to install the hotfix, the “workaround” in the KB article is rather humorous: “Open the document using Office 2007.” Oh!!
Thanks to Patty for alerting me to the issue!
