Word 2007 serious Bug in KB969604 released June 9, 2009

This is an urgent issue!

The security patch released by Microsoft as KB969604 has a serious flaw that results in Document Variables being corrupted in any Word document that you edit and save. This flaw is also contained in Office 2007 SP2 service pack.

Word LX uses document variables to control a number of features in the system. The most obvious one is named "papertype" and controls the way MultiPrint sends documents to the printer. When you print using "Final" the value of the "papertype" variable is used to decide what paper source to use during the print job. The Microsoft patch corrupts this value and the document will no longer print as expected. This corruption appears to happen in both docx and compatibility mode doc style documents created edited with Word 2007!

There are two methods work around this serious bug:

• You must uninstall both SP2 for Office 2007 and uninstall the KB969604 patch and mark these to be ignored by any automatic Windows Update mechanisms (so they aren't automatically re-installed)

OR

• Request and install the Microsoft Hot Fix ID KB970942 (posted June 30, 2009). As with all hot fix patches this should be tested in your environment before deployment! Our initial testing indicates that this hot fix does fix the problem, however we do not know at this point if it causes any others!