If you're an early adopter of Microsoft's new Office 2008 for Mac and share a computer over a network then follow this tip to prevent unauthorised access to your files.

There's a bug with Redmond's new Office 2008 software that Microsoft are aware of that allows users without administrator privileges to access Office files. At risk are users with more than one local user account and those who connect their Mac to public networks and workplace networking environments. Given that most Macs in a corporate environment should have multiple user accounts this should be a compulsory fix for enterprise users.

While Microsoft work on a fix for Office 2008 in the next software update here is the recommended short-term fix issued by the company:

1. Log in to the computer by using a user account with administrator privileges.
2. In /Applications/Utilities, open Terminal.
3. In the Terminal window, type the following command on one line, and then press RETURN.

   /usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod -R a-st "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Automator" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"

4. When prompted, enter the password for the user account that you used to log in in step 1.
5. In the Terminal window, type the following command on one line, and then press RETURN.

   /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown -h -R root:admin "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Automator" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"

6. If prompted, enter the password for the user account that you used to log in in step 1.