This post is to make you aware of a solution (Hotfix) for an issue affecting Office 2003 customers using Rights Management Service (RMS) and Active Directory Rights Management Service (AD RMS) protected documents. Symptom: Starting on December 11, 2009, customers using Office 2003 will not be able to open Office 2003 documents protected with the Rights Management Services (RMS) or Active Directory Rights Management Service (AD RMS). Customers will also not be able to save Office 2003 documents protected with RMS/AD RMS. The following error message may be displayed when attempting to open RMS-protected/ AD RMS-protected documents using Office 2003: "Unexpected error occurred. Please try again later or contact your system administrator" Scope: This symptom affects Office 2003 products used in conjunction with RMS and AD RMS, including Word 2003, Excel 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Outlook 2003, Excel Viewer and Word Viewer. It does not affect Office 2007. Solution: A supported hotfix is now available from Microsoft. Note: the hotfix is intended to correct only the problem described above. Apply the hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem. Please review the following KB Articles for more information on affected products, hotfix prerequisites, restart requirements, workarounds, hotfix supersedence, registry information and file information: KB798551: Description of the Office 2003 documents protected with AD RMS/RMS Hotfix package: December 11, 2009 KB978557: Description of the Excel Viewer documents protected with AD RMS/RMS Hotfix package: December 11, 2009 KB978558: Description of the Word Viewer documents protected with AD RMS/RMS Hotfix package: December 11, 2009 More Information: The Office product group will provide updated information as it becomes available at the Web sites below. Resources Related to This Issue RMS Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/rmssupp/ Office Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/ Laura Zhang - MSFT