Important Upcoming Changes to Knowledge Base (KB) Articles

"As of November 7, 2002, prefix letters will be phased out of all Knowledge Base (KB) articles worldwide making it easier for you to request an article in a language other than your browser settings. Today, KB articles are published in 21 languages, each with an unrelated number scheme and prefix letter, for example, Q123454 is an English U.S. article. By eliminating the prefix and changing the numbers of some articles, we will make sure that all translations of any article will have exactly the same content number. Customers worldwide can view localized versions of articles by passing an internet standard for language locale and the content number.

What effect will this have?

Existing URLs to KB articles will continue to function for two years, but new articles will no longer be published to the old naming conventions. Existing links to articles that contain the Q prefix will automatically redirect to the appropriate articles.

What is the new way to reference articles?

When searching for an article on the Premier site, you only have to enter the article ID without the prefix. For example, Q123456 will become 123456. KB articles that are referenced on the Premier site will be
https://premier.microsoft.com/premier/library/default.aspx?path=kb;[ln];n where ln is the language value from the table below and n is the number of the article without the Q identifier.

To see articles on the Support site, the new method of referencing KB articles will be http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=n where n is the number of the article. This interface will automatically sense your browser's language settings and show you the right article. If you prefer to explicitly request an article in a language other than your browser settings, you can request articles by using http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;[ln];n where [ln] is a value from the table below.

The timetable

• November 7, 2002 U.S. English KB articles will lose the Q prefix but retain the same numbers.
• November 18, 2002 through December 31, 2002 all other languages will lose their prefix letters and in many cases be renumbered to line up with the U.S. source numbers.
• In January 2005 the old content numbers will no longer function. "

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