I have a workbook that was originally created in Excel 97 that uses NetDDE
and has worked with each new Office release until Excel 2003. When I open
the workbook Excel 2003 prompts to update the data, and after saying yes
complains that 'Remote data is not accessible'. It does not appear to be a
security or permissions problem as I see no error messages on the machine
where the DDE server is located. I have searched for a possible explanation
in various MS knowledgebases but find no answers.

Does Excel 2003 support NetDDE? If that is the case, it would be nice if
that was stated somewhere.

I am using the same syntax for netdde that has always worked:

=\\servername\appname|item!'topic'

Thank you.