Downloading Windows updates for old software

How can I download all updates to Office 2003 (in case Microsoft stops support via Windows Update)? When I try I get to "Page not found" and "This page cannot be displayed", and my Google-fu is insufficient to find/download most of the updates. I have found a few with names like office2003-KB925256-FullFile-ENU.exe but most elude me. I have tried on my Windows 10 system and on an ancient XP system. I found How do I download KB updates for Office XP under Windows 10 that are no longer on Microsoft website? suggesting use of the Wayback machine but not how it works.

Where/how can I download a complete set of updates? And if possible both in English (ENU) and Dutch (NLD).

Background: with every release Office seems to become safer (good) and more intelligent (not good in my opinion). I happen to have a legal copy of Office 2003 which I am still using, and it receives about 35 updates when I install it on a new PC, but how long will this support last? So, locked down as I am, I tried to download all the updates to burn to a CD. A long time ago I managed a similar trick with Windows 98, but I'm having no success with Office. I have Office SP3.

Solution 1:

I'm self-answering so that anyone else can do this or a similar action. @Moab and @Ramhound pointed me to https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx where everything can be found if you know how to search. This is what I did:

1. I installed Office2003 and also SP3 (Office2003SP3-KB923618-FullFile-ENU.exe) and FileFormatConverters.exe which I already had.

2. Run Windows Update (several times) and note the KB numbers of all updates (see note A). Create an empty directory (folder) for each of them. Or use my list given below.

3. Go to catalog.update.microsoft and search on each KB number; download the appropriate one(s) for your configuration/language to the appropriate directory. In a few cases there may be more than one download and/or the download may be language-dependent.

4. The downloads will be cabinet (CAB) files with names like fm20_86bc3fbc23d82c942ebe6e5b5542dd49572d26a5.cab. Double-clicking the CAB file will show the patch inside it; double-clicking again will extract the patch as an MSP (Windows Installer Patch) file (in this case FM20.msp). Be sure to extract the patch to the right directory, some names are not unique. If you are doing multiple languages, append a suffix like _EN or _NL to the MSP file. You can then delete the CAB file.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for all KB numbers. Save your work (in my case 393MB in 43 directories) in a safe place.

After a new Office installation, you can visit each directory and double-click each MSP file to install the patch. You might like to do a clean install, install your patch set, and verify that Windows Update finds nothing.

Notes: A. On Windows 10 you need to go to Settings > Updates > Advanced Options and enable Receive updates for other Microsoft products before clicking Check For Updates. You can then find the updates in View Update History. In a few cases you may need a few more clicks to get the KB number (eg "Microsoft Office File Validation Add-in" takes you to a web page address including 2501584 which is the KB number.)

B. It does not seem to matter what order you install the patches; I did them in numerical order.

C. In at least one case (KB943452) there is an update for Dutch (NLD) but not for English; other languages may also show variations.

Here is my list for office 2003 (32-bit, EN and NL) YMMV!

907417 943452 943973 947319 955439 974554 975051 978551 980373 980923 981716 2288613 2289163 2293428 2449798 2493523 2501584 2526297 2535812 2539581 2553065 2596904 2687626 2726929 2760494 2760574 2810048 2817474 2825621 2825645 2850047 2863822 2878299 2878303 2881030 2984938 3085549 3203484 3213641 3213644 4011715 4011717 4018354