[willed]

Surely this would be the easiest thing in the world to patch? Is there any shareware that does this??

[cpac]

Office hasn't been updated much since it came out a couple years ago (at the time I think Carbon apps in general couldn't handle long filenames)

You can always just change the name in the finder-Word will still open files with longer names, it just temporarily truncates them.

[Cadaver]

Typical Microsoft. Release a terribly over-priced application, then spend two years sitting on your hands and updating as little as possible.