File Block Functionality is a very new security feature implemented into Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007. File Block Functionality was designed to deliver an extra barrier of protection to Office 2003 and Office 2007 users when handling potentially malicious documents.It allows for Specific documents that can be blocked from being executed. Office 2003 and 2007 users which no longer have the ability to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents will be able to find out how to recuperate their files by referring the following KB articles 922849, 922848 and 922847.
The File Block Functionality for Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system allows administrators to restrict via registry and Group Policy specific Office file types that can or cannot be opened when using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Blocking specific Office file types allows administrators to temporarily deny users the ability to open certain files, such as when a threat of attack from a given Office file type exists.
The KB articles listed above will reveal the actions that users need to take in order to resolve error messages that have been generated due to File Block.
The impossibility to execute Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in the context of error messages pointing to issues related to the registry policy setting, is connected to File Block. Just access the Microsoft KB articles 922849, 922848 and 922847 in order to understand how to modify the Windows registry in order to fix the problem.