During the release of Office 2010 Service Pack 1 we found that if you had an Office install with multiple languages only the English version would be updated. On October 17th we rolled out the fix that would detect multiple languages on the same machine thus updating all languages to Sp1.

What does this mean if you’ve installed Sp1?
If you have Sp1 installed and go to Microsoft Update you may see Sp1 listed again ready for download. This will happen if you have multiple languages installed of Office 2010.

For the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) admins you will see Office 2010 Sp1 offered in the Windows Admin console ready for approval.

There are no file/binary updates with this change only a detection on the Microsoft Update service.  We now target the other languages installed on the machine.

We will be updating KB2510690 with this information.

Hello,

Today's is a small month with two updates being release for the Outlook Junk email Filter.

The Update now live and available for download.

Outlook Junk Email Filters for Office 2003 and 2007.

Today we’re pleased to announce the 3^rd (and likely final) Service Pack release for Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007. We are targeting a release date within Calendar Q4 2011. As we approach the date we will have more to share on exact timing.

We are offering this release in preparation for the April October 2012 end of mainstream support for the 2007 client and server products. The October 2011 release provides a 6-month window to test and deploy the release prior to exiting mainstream support. (note: the correction is due to an error in the support date that was fixed on the product support lifecycle web page. The correct date is October).

Upgrading to Office 2010 is also an option for those who are still using Office 2007. Office 2010 will remain in mainstream support until 2015, and this path provides a much better option for those looking to upgrade from Office 2003 prior to its end of life, scheduled for April 2014.

For those of you hoping to test SP3 prior to its deployment, we will continue or standard practice with Service Pack releases. Initially SP3 will be offered through the Microsoft Download Center as a manual download, through Microsoft Update as an Optional update. No earlier than 90 days after release, we will convert SP3 to an Automatic Update for our 2007 customers.

Service Pack 3 contains a roll-up of all 2007 Cumulative and Public Updates since Service Pack 2 for both Office client suites and applications as well as SharePoint Servers, in addition to some new fixes for issues discovered during the lifecycle of SP2.

For each of these products, if you are current with Automatic Updates for Office 2007, you have already installed most of the changes in the release. SP3 is much smaller than 2007 SP1, SP2 or the recently released 2010 SP1. We will provide documentation detailing the changes and the affected packages on TechNet.

The deployment experience should be straightforward. Unlike 2010 SP1, we will not be asking customers to deploy the accompanying Cumulative Update at the same time. Our deployment guidance for 2007 servers remains consistent with the guidance we have provided in the past. Office Client deployment for SP3 will also remain consistent with prior guidance.

SP3 will include changes in the following areas:

Office Client 2007 Suites
Office SharePoint 2007 Servers
Office SharePoint Search Server 2007
Office SharePoint Designer 2007
Office Project 2007
Office Visio 2007
Office Proofing tools 2007
Calendar Printing Assistant for Outlook 2007
Office InterConnect 2007
Office Compatibility Pack
PowerPoint Viewer
Visio Viewer
Office Servers Language Pack
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
Office Access Runtime and Data Connectivity Components 

The September Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 3 security bulletins and 17 non-security updates.

Security updates were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-072

These Excel updates address the vulnerabilities by correcting the way that Microsoft Excel manages objects in memory, indexes an array of memory locations,  arses certain records in Excel files, handles a particular type of conditional expression, and conducts bounds checking on array index values. Please see associated KB articles for more information around these updates.

• Security Update for Excel Services for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2553093), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2553070), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2553070), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Excel Web Application 2010 (KB2553095)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2553089)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2553090)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553091), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553091), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553096), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553096), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (KB2553072)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB2553073)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel Viewer (KB2553075)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2553094)
• Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB2553074)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-073

These Office security updates address the vulnerabilities by correcting the way Microsoft Office loads external libraries and initializes objects. Please see associated KB articles for more information around these updates.

• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB2584052)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2584063)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2584066), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2584066), 64-Bit Edition

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-074

These security updates address the vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Microsoft SharePoint validates and sanitizes user input, parses malicious XML and XSL files, and handles script contained inside of specific request parameters. Please see associated KB articles for more information around these updates.

• Security Update for Microsoft 2010 Word Web Application (KB2566450)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007 (KB2553005), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Groove 2007 (KB2552997)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 (KB2552998)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Groove Server 2007 (KB2552999)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Groove Server 2010 (KB2508965)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2345212), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2508964), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2553001), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2553002), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB2553003), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2494022)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 (KB2566449)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2560885)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2560890)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2560890)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2566456)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2566954)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2566958)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2566960)
• Security Update for Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 (KB2566445), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Office SharePoint Foundation 2010 (KB2494001)
• Security Update for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 (KB2494007)
• Security Update for Windows SharePoint Services 2007 (KB2493987), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

Non-Security updates were released:

To enhance the controls/engine associated with Office Click-to-Run:

• Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2515417)

To decrease installation failures for updates installed on Office 2010:

• Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2553092), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

To enhance Office SharePoint Online:

• Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2566458), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

To enhance the user experience when mapping an address to a contact in Outlook:

• Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB2583910)

To update the Office File Validation catalogue and to address performance issues when using workbooks stored on network locations:

• Update for Office File Validation 2010 (KB2553065), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

To facilitate changes to the time-zone data to accommodate daylight savings time:

• Update for Office SharePoint Foundation 2010 (KB2553014)
• Update for Windows SharePoint Services 2007 (KB2553018), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

To enhance the experience of Office 365 users in conjunction with the Outlook Social Connector:

• Update for Outlook Social Connector 2010 (KB2583935), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition

Outlook Junk Email Filters for supported Office versions were also updated:

• Definition Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB982726), 32-Bit Edition and 64-Bit Edition
• Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB2553111)
• Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Junk Email Filter (KB2553110)

The August 2011 Cumulative Update for SharePoint Foundation (2010, 2007) contains the following Daylight Saving Time (DST) changes:

Russian Time Zones:

• A new time zone has been created for Kaliningrad with display name “(UTC+3:00) Kaliningrad”. This time zone does not support Daylight Saving Time.
• Support for Daylight Saving Time has been discontinued and UTC offsets have been updated for time zones listed in the table below:

It also contains 2011-adjusted DST start and end dates for the following time zones:

• Fiji Standard Time
• Samoa Standard Time

In addition to these changes, the August 2011 CU update rolls up the DST changes that were previously released in the June 2011 CU:

KB2553931 - includes 2011 DST changes for Egypt (DST cancellation), Namibia, Magadan & Israel.

If you'd like to keep track of regular updates in this area, you can get updates and information at the Daylight Saving Time Help and
Support Center.

The August Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 1 security bulletin and 3 non-security updates.

The following Security updates were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-060

• Security Update for Microsoft Office Visio 2003 (KB2553009)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Visio 2007 (KB2553010)
• Security Update for Microsoft Visio 2010 (KB2553008), 64-Bit Edition and 32-Bit Edition

As with normal cadence, Outlook Junk Email Filters for Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 64-Bit / 32-Bit Edition were also updated.

The July Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 1 security bulletin and 3 non-security updates.

The following Security update were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-055

· Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB2493523)

Joining the security bulletin was the Service Pack 1 for Business Contact Manager for Microsoft Outlook 2010 (KB2553006), 64-bit Edition and 32-bit Edition

As with normal cadence, Outlook Junk Email Filter for Office 2007 was also updated.

Please visit the entire post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officeinteroperability/archive/2011/07/12/microsoft-office-binary-file-format-validator-is-now-available.aspx

The Office Interoperability team is proud to announce the public Beta release of the Microsoft Office Binary File Format Validator (BFFValidator) tool. Available on the Microsoft Download Center , BFFValidator is a tool that will validate whether a .doc, .ppt, or .xls binary file format (bff) file is conformant with the Microsoft Office File Format Open Specifications .

Congratulations to the Office Interoperability team on a great accomplishment.

With Office 2010 Service Pack 1 having now been out for one week, we wanted to cover some of the most common questions we’ve been getting. Here is a compiled list of the 5 most common questions.

1. Will installing Office 2010 Service Pack 1 require a reboot?
2. Common Problem: “The installation of this package failed”
3. How do I confirm that I have Office 2010 Service Pack 1 installed?
4. Can I uninstall Office Service Pack 1?
5. If I uninstall the Service Pack that contains the security fixes, am I vulnerable?

1. Will installing Office 2010 Service Pack 1 require a reboot?

In the majority installs for Client and Server, Office 2010 SP1 may require a reboot. To decrease the likelihood of the reboot, it is advised to close down all open Office applications prior to install.

2. Common Problem: “The installation of this package failed” due to not enough disk space

This is the generic error dialog that appears when an unknown error occurs during installation. The majority of these failures are related to not having enough space on the system drive. The download size for Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 x86 is 361 MB, however with extraction (%temp%) and windows installer caching (%windir%), the amount of disk space required for installation is around 1.3 GB.

If freeing up disk space does not solve the issue, please read the following KB article KB954713.

3. How do I confirm that I have Office 2010 Service Pack 1 installed?

There are several ways to learn whether or not you have Office SP1.

The first is checking the updates through Add/Remove programs. This can be done by opening the Start Menu, go to the Control Panel, and then click on Programs [and Features]. From there, click on View installed updates which will display entries for installed SP1 update.

Another way to see if Service Pack 1 is installed is to view the Help documentation in any of the individual applications. To do this, click the File tab in the top left, and then find and click “Help” in the left menu. From the “Help” page, you will see the following dialog on the right side of the page.

Click on the Additional Version and Copyright link to bring up the following dialog which will show the version along with the Service Pack baseline.

The best way to learn if you’re completely up to date with all of Office SP1 is to scan MU. If this is not an option, you can get a comprehensive list of all Office Products are installed and what baseline they are at by using the ROIScan tool located here on TechNet.

4. Can I uninstall Office Service Pack 1?

Note: Server packages are NOT uninstallable for Office 2010 Service Pack 1

Yes, with Office 2010 you have the ability to uninstall the service pack on your client machines. For this service pack, we have added the ability to uninstall SP1 updates through Add/Remove Programs. In the near future we will also be releasing a tool similiar to Oarpman (used for 2007 Sp2) which allows you to streamline the removal of the service pack from your client machines.

NOTE: Uninstalling the service pack will remove the SP from any product that has the service pack install (e.g. if you have Office and Project Sp1 installed on the same machine by removing Office Sp1 you will also remove the SP for Project). To use this feature, open the Start Menu, go to the Control Panel, and then click on Programs [and Features]. From there, click on View installed updates which will display entries for each installed SP1 update. You can now select any client update and click “Uninstall” in the menu:

You will then see the following two dialogs:

After completing uninstall, you will likely be prompted to restart to complete the action.

5. If I uninstall the Service Pack that contains the security fixes, am I vulnerable?

After you uninstall the service pack it is recommended to go to Microsoft Update to scan for the latest security updates. After doing so you will be up to date with all Microsoft Office security updates that have been released. Per Microsoft policy we will support both the service pack and the original release for a 12 month period.

Per our earlier post, this is a reminder that on July 12, Office XP will exit the Extended Support phase of its lifecycle, per the Support Policy of Microsoft.

After the end of support, Microsoft will no longer provide public fixes for the Office XP release. Automatic Updates that ship on “Patch Tuesday” will be discontinued for Office XP. There will be no effect on installed software; products will still continue to function., activation will continue to work as expected.

Office XP was quite a remarkable release, it was the version of Office that deprecated Clippy and brought us SharePoint, Web Services integration and other things. SharePoint Team Services turned out to be a pretty smart bet, growing to a $1.3B business over the next 10 years, adding over 20,000 users each day. Office XP brought us Activation, Task Panes, Speech Recognition, Word’s “Reveal Formatting” command, the Data Connection Wizard of Excel, Rules in Outlook, and even the Path animation type in PowerPoint. As with all releases of Office, XP introduced quite a bit of new capability. The original Office XP Press Release is still available, dated March 5, 2001.

What options do Office XP users have?

Microsoft recommends that customers keep their systems secure by upgrading to the latest, supported product and/or service pack, such as Microsoft Office 2010. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Office 2003 Service Pack 3 are also supported for the duration outlined in the Support Lifecycle Product Database.

For our Premier Support customers, a Custom Support program is available. The support team has posted a useful web page about available options for retired product support. They have also published a good FAQ page to explain some of the background on the support policy.

For more information, consult these resources:

· Retired Product Support Options
· Microsoft Services Premier Support
· Microsoft Services Premier Support – Custom Support
· Support Lifecycle Information for all Office Products
· Office XP Support Lifecycle
· Microsoft Support Lifecycle

Yesterday Service Pack 1 (SP1) for SharePoint 2010 was made available. SP1 contains a number of important fixes that improve the SharePoint experience for our customers. With the recommendation to install SP1 for SharePoint came a recommendation to ALSO deploy the June Cumulative Update (CU) for SharePoint simultaneously.

It’s worth explaining this recommendation in detail and answering some common questions about how / why we made this recommendation.

First, to explain the difference between SP1 and the June CU.

• SharePoint 2010 SP1 contains all SharePoint updates published through the April 2011 Cumulative Update in addition to other fixes that were applied specifically to SP1 during its development. SP1 is a baseline, and that baseline is tied to our Service Pack Life Cycle Policy. We recommend applying SP1 to your SharePoint environment because it resets the baseline for your entire SharePoint environment, and prepares your environment for future releases such as the June CU.
  
• The June Cumulative Update is the first Post-SP1 build released to customers. It contains new fixes to issues raised through various escalation channels and through our support organization. The June CU is based on Service Pack 1, but it adds new updates to some of (not all)  the packages that SP1 installs.

The recommended approach is to apply Service Pack 1 and the June CU into an environment together. Because the packages changed by the June CU supersede SP1, the order of installation isn’t critical. If you install the CU before SP1, the packages that the CU updated won’t be overwritten by SP1. Because the June CU is from a later build than SP1, many will be comfortable installing SP1 first, and then applying the CU.

A separate topic of conversation is the order in which you should apply SharePoint Foundation vs. SharePoint Server Updates. Per the guidance from the SharePoint team, when applying SP1 or the CU it is recommended to apply the Foundation packages before applying the server packages.

The recommended order of installation is as follows:

Update Foundation first:
SharePoint Foundation 2010 Service Pack 1
Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Pack
June 2011 CU for SharePoint Foundation 2010

Then SharePoint Server:
SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1
Service Pack 1 for Server Language Pack 2010
June 2011 CU for SharePoint Server 2010

You can then run the Configuration Wizard (PSConfig) one time on all boxes.

Some links which will help in planning and executing your SharePoint 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 June CU deployment:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.aspx – Updates for SharePoint Products
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806326.aspx – SharePoint Foundation Updates
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806329.aspx – SharePoint Server Updates
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510766 – List of all SharePoint Server 2010 SP1 Packages
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2532120 – Technical Details about the SharePoint 2010 SP1 and Office Server 2010 releases
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2536599 – Description of the June CU for SharePoint Server 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff806338.aspx – Install a Software Update for SharePoint Server 2010

We are thrilled to announce the availability of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for our 2010 family of products.

The SP1 release is important because it provides us with an opportunity to address customer feedback as well as the security, stability and performance of our 2010 wave of products. The release underscores our commitment to improving the quality of our software over time. We are grateful to those customers and partners who have taken time to provide us the feedback that makes our products and services better.

SP1 contains all Cumulative Updates and Public Updates for 2010 that have already shipped. SP1 also contains new fixes for areas of each product. For those of you seeking a complete list of changes for each product contained in SP1, please visit this Excel Workbook – this is a very handy reference for those building test / evaluation plans for Office Client SP1. The workbook containing the changes for SharePoint Server 2010 is located under this link. The KB Articles referenced below will be updated throughout the day to include the live links to the published articles.

Beginning tomorrow, various Office teams will update their respective team blogs with additional information on SP1. Today you can hop over to the SharePoint Team Blog to read a bit more about the SP1 release.

Today SP1 is available from the Download center. The Downloads Table below provides links to the new packages for SP1. If you have installed all Office Automatic Updates, you will also see SP1 available as a manual download from Microsoft Update. After a 90 day grace period, SP1 will be offered as an automatic update through Microsoft Update. Customers using the Office Click-to-Run technology will have SP1 streamed to them beginning in July.

For SharePoint customers planning to deploy Service Pack 1, it is also recommended to install the June 2011 Cumulative Update for SharePoint when it becomes available in the coming weeks.

Download Links for 2010 Service Pack 1

A common question we’ve been getting is “How come my third party tool says that a file needs to be updated, but when I go to Microsoft Update, I see ‘There are no new updates available for your computer’?” This is because Office updates utilize Windows Installer technology to determine if a file needs to be updated. When you click “Check for Updates” in the Windows Update app, the Windows Update agent determines which Office updates are applicable to your machine based on the products that are installed. This is done by evaluating applicability rules as defined for each update. To learn more about applicability rules used by the Windows Update agent, review this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb902473(VS.85).aspx

Using Windows Installer to detect applicability has several benefits over file based detection. This includes the ability to update multiple products, repair functionality for missing files and components, and support for reliable uninstallation of updates. To learn more about Windows Installer, review this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310598

Other tools that use file based detection utilize a list of expected file versions when scanning a machine to determine which files need to be updated. This can sometimes be problematic since an Office update may no longer contain a specific file after support for an old baseline (e.g. Service Pack) has been removed, but the file based detection tool still expects the files to be at that specific version. Thus providing you with a false positive result from the scan.

Using Windows Installer to Inventory Products and Patches: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa369558(v=VS.85).aspx

To learn more about tools that can be used for detection, review this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961747

The June Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 2 security bulletins and 6 non-security updates.

The following Security updates were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-045

• Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2002 (KB2541003)
• Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2523021), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2523021), 32-Bit Edition
• Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB2541012)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (KB2541025)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB2541007)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel Viewer (KB2541015)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-049

• Security Update for Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (KB2510061)
• Security Update for Microsoft InfoPath 2010 (KB2510065), 64-Bit Edition
• Security Update for Microsoft InfoPath 2010 (KB2510065), 32-Bit Edition

Joining the security bulletins were a handful of non-security updates:

• Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB2543854) which decreases installation failures for updates installed on Microsoft Office 2003.
• Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB2539581), Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2539530), Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2523113), 64-Bit Edition, Update for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2523113), 32-Bit Edition which add support for the new Indian rupee currency symbol.

As with normal cadence, Outlook Junk Email Filter for Office 2003 was also updated.

Welcome to TechEd Atlanta! For those of you unable to attend the event in person, we’d like to take a moment to introduce our Service Pack 1 release.

Service Pack 1 is on track for release at the end of June.

SP1 releases for both Office client suites and SharePoint server products will be made available. All language versions of SP1 will release simultaneously. Initially, Service Pack 1 will be offered as a manual download from the Download Center and from Microsoft Update, and no sooner than 90 days after release, will be made available as an Automatic Update.

SP1 will include many interesting changes. Across the client suites and server products, SP1 offers a sprinkling of improvements to make a strong 2010 release wave even stronger. During TechEd and beyond, teams on http://blogs.office.com will update their blogs with more specific details of 2010 Service Pack 1 contents.

There are far too many changes in SP1 to list here, but the list below is a sample of SP1 highlights to get things started. This is a list of things that you can do now that you couldn’t before, or things that are just better than they were with the original release:

• Outlook fixes an issue where “Snooze Time” would not reset between appointments.
• The default behavior for PowerPoint "Use Presenter View" option changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
• Integrated community content in the Access Application Part Gallery.
• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support.
• Improved backup / restore functionality for SharePoint Server
• The Word Web Application extends printing support to “Edit Mode.”
• Project Professional now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists.
• Internet Explorer 9 “Native” support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint
• Office Web Applications Support for Chrome
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server
• Visio Fixes scaling issues and arrowhead rendering errors with SVG export
• Proofing Tools improve spelling suggestions in Canadian English, French, Swedish and European Portuguese.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only)
• Office client suites using “Add Remove Programs” Control Panel,  building on our work from Office 2007 SP2

Each product in Office and each Server capability area will have changes in SP1. Specific changes will be detailed on TechNet and in KB Articles. On release day, we will publish all associated KB articles on this blog for reference.

As we have discussed in prior blog posts, SP1 will also roll-up our Public Update and Cumulative Update releases to date. SP1 will include all of these fixes, and represent a milestone in the support lifecycle of Office and SharePoint 2010 versions. Below is the list of fixes to date for 2010 products.

• Office 2010 April 2011 Cumulative Update (KB 2528533) – Released April 26, 2011
• Security and Non-Security Updates for April 2011 – Released April 12, 2011
• Security and Non-Security Updates for March 2011 – Released March 8, 2011
• Office 2010 February 2011 Cumulative Update (KB 2493730) – Released February 22, 2011
• Security and Non-Security Updates for February 2011 – Released February 8, 2011
• Non-Security Updates for January 2011 – Released January 11, 2011
• Office 2010 December 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2479673) – Released December 14, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for December 2010 – Released December 14, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for November 2010 – Released November 9, 2010
• Office 2010 October 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2449183) – Released October 26, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for October 2010 – Released October 12, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for September 2010 – Released September 14, 2010
• Office 2010 August 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2396341) – Released August 31, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for August 2010 – Released August 10, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for July 2010 – Released July 13, 2010
• Office 2010 June 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2259686) – Released June 29, 2010

 
TechEd Sessions for Office Client & SP1
For TechEd attendees, make sure you stop into the Office booth to discuss our SP1 changes. Office, SharePoint, Project, Visio will all be represented there and will be happy to talk to you about the release. SharePoint has no specific session content dedicated to SP1, but they will be available in the booth to answer questions. Be sure to visit the SharePoint Team Blog for SP1 details as well. You can find the location and other information about TechEd sessions in the official session schedule. Here’s where you can learn more about SP1 for the client suites:

Monday
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM: OSP371-WRK - Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment: Walk-through of an Office 2010 Deployment for IT Professionals

Tuesday
10:15 AM - 11:30 AM: OSP314 - Architecting Microsoft Office for Physical, Virtual and Cloud Deployments

Wednesday
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM: OSP371R-WRK - Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment: Walk-through of an Office 2010 Deployment for IT Professionals

Thursday
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM: OSP315 - Managing Microsoft Office in an Interoperable and Multi-Device World

The May Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 1 security bulletin and 3 non-security updates.

The following Security updates were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-036

• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2540162)
• Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 (KB2535802)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 (KB2535812)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB2535818)

The PowerPoint patches released this month contain fixes to issues of corrupted background images in layout slides that were reported with the PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 April 2011 Public Updates. 

For users who experienced problems with PowerPoint Public Updates (KB2464588 or KB2464617), the May Public Update includes fixes for the PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 issues. Additionally, for those users experiencing document issues after installing this update please review the workarounds listed in the KB’s for 2003 or 2002.

Joining the security bulletin is a rerelease of Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB2509470) which fixes issues around print previewing that were reported with the Outlook 2007 April 2011 Public Update.

As with normal cadence, Outlook Junk Email Filters for Office 2003 and 2007 were also updated.

We have had reports of PowerPoint 2002 problems after installing the April 2011 Pubilc Update.

When you open presentations that contain layouts with background images in PowerPoint 2002, an error may occur. When the error occurs, you receive a message that states that some contents (text, images, or objects) have corrupted. You can determine what content has been lost by viewing the layout, but not by viewing the slide content. Items that were removed will display a blank box or a box that contains "cleansed."

We have released a hotfix to address this issue. You can read the new KB2543242 article here, and download the hotfix.

This update will also be made available as part of a future Public Update for PowerPoint 2002. We  recommend all users who have installed KB2464617 to install this replacement hotfix. 

After installing the April 2011 Public Update, some Outlook 2007 users reported difficulty with print previewing messages.

To correct this issue, we have issued a public hotfix, KB2512788, which you can download and install. This update will also be a part of a future Public Update posted to Microsoft Update as well.

If you have further questions, you can contact Microsoft Support for further assistance. For home users, no-charge support is available by calling 1-866-PCSAFETY in the United States and Canada or by contacting your local Microsoft subsidiary. For more information about how to contact your local Microsoft subsidiary for support issues with security updates.

Some users have contacted Microsoft support (and found their way to the blog comment feature) to ask for a remedy to the background images issue identified in the KB article relating to our PowerPoint 2003 April 2011 Public Update.

We had mentioned earlier that we intended to make a hotfix available as quickly as possible to address the situation. We have now posted an update to fix this issue. The KB article is here, and the download is here. You can manually download and install or deploy the fix. The new KB number is 2543241.

In our June Public Update release, we will release the update through the Automatic Update channel, where any remaining users will be updated with the changes.

Update: We are aware some of you are experiencing issues with two of the updates, KB2509470 (Outlook), 2464588 (PowerPoint).

KB2464588 issues have been addressed with a new update: http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/04/23/issues-after-installing-powerpoint-2003-update-kb2464588.aspx

In both cases, we are working on publishing an update to resolve the issues caused by those releases. We expect to release these updates as a hotfix to resolve those issues. We expect to have a PowerPoint update available for manual download before Monday, April 25th. We expect to have an Outlook update posted no later by Friday, April 29th. We'll keep this blog post updated as we have more information to share.

If you have further questions, you can contact Microsoft Support for further assistance. For home users, no-charge support is available by calling 1-866-PCSAFETY in the United States and Canada or by contacting your local Microsoft subsidiary. For more information about how to contact your local Microsoft subsidiary for support issues with security updates, visit the Microsoft International Support website:

The April Public Update release for Office is now live and available for download. This release contains 4 security bulletins, 1 security advisory, and 8 non-security updates.

The following Security updates were released for:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-021

· Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2002 (KB2466169)
· Security Update for Microsoft Excel 2010 (KB2466146), 32-bit / 64-bit Edition
· Security Update for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (KB2466156)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (KB2502786)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (KB2464583)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel Viewer (KB2466158)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-023 and MS11-029 (XP Only)

· Security Update for Microsoft Office XP (KB2509461)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB2509503)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2509488)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-022

· Security Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System (KB2464635)
· Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 (KB2464617)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 (KB2464588)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB2464594)
· Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 (KB2519975), 32-bit / 64-bit Edition
· Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (KB2464623)
· Security Update for PowerPoint Viewer 2010 (KB2519984)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Web Apps 2010 (KB2520047)

Microsoft Security Advisory (2501584) - Release of Microsoft Office File Validation for Microsoft Office

· Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (KB2464605)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2003 (KB2464603)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 (KB2464599)
· Security Update for Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 (KB2464598)

Joining the security bulletins were a handful of non-security updates:

· Update for Microsoft Office 2007 System  (KB2508958) which will decrease installation failures for updates installed on Microsoft Office 2007.
· Update for Microsoft Office Web Apps (KB2510648) which provides critical compatibility updates for customers running mixed-mode server deployments.
· Update for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (KB2510639) which provides critical compatibility updates for customers running mixed-mode server deployments.
· Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (KB2509470) which provides stability and performance improvements.

As with normal cadence, Outlook Junk Email Filters for Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 32-bit/64-bit were also updated.

It is my pleasure to announce the general availability of Microsoft Office File Validation for Office 2003 and Office 2007.

Office File Validation is an Add-in that will validate incoming Office files to make sure the file structure conforms to the Office definition.

Today we released the Microsoft Office File Validation Security Advisory along with supporting documentation for Office File Validation. Below is the structure of the release and supporting articles.

If you need information on how this all fits together you can check out the TechNet article or review the Knowledge Base articles mentioned above.

Office File Validation will be available for Office 2003 and Office 2007 via Microsoft Update in the near future. At this time we didn’t release this update to the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) service.

Thanks,

Modesto, David, Lawrence

Update: Read more about 2010 SP1 in this post.

Summer is just around the corner, and as promised, we are on track for delivering Office 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 SP1 in mid-summer 2011. During the coming weeks, you will see various teams updating their blogs with specific information about changes to appear in Service Pack 1. These posts should provide customers and administrators with great information about the upcoming release.

Keep an eye on this blog and the two blog families below for updates on Office 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 SP1:

http://blogs.office.com (and related product team blogs)
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/

TechEd North America as a key venue where we will discuss SP1 at length, including the tentative release schedule. If you’re planning to attend, please be sure to stop into the session for details. We’ll also have more to share on this blog around that time as well.

In the meantime, we can reveal some additional detail around the SP1 release, including our plan for language-version updates. SP1 will update all 40 SKU languages for Office, and update the SKU languages for SharePoint (with appropriate caveats noted in the SharePoint blog post). In addition, 4 Language Interface Pack releases will also be updated: Galician, Basque, Catalan, Serbian Cyrillic. The time frames for releasing language versions of SP1 will be discussed in a future post.

As we briefly discussed on our last SP1 post, changes to Office and SharePoint products are cumulative. Any updated packages we ship (Word.msp, for example) contain Cumulative and Public updates to date. This is an advantage of Automatic Updates that is often unrecognized – keeping current significantly reduces the amount of testing necessary for Service Pack releases because those Public Updates already include the Cumulative Updates for the affected products / packages.

The data below is an accumulated list of all 2010 fixes that have already shipped. These will be included in our SP1 release. This is a combination of Cumulative Updates and Public Updates. In addition to what is listed below, SP1 will contain more fixes in each product. Between now and the time of release, we will publish more details about the coming changes. Office 2010 suites, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office 2010 servers, Office Web Apps, Search Server 2010, SharePoint 2010 Products, and FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint are included in the list below.

• Security and Non-Security Updates for March 2011 – Released March 8, 2011
• Office 2010 February 2011 Cumulative Update (KB 2493730) – Released February 22, 2011
• Security and Non-Security Updates for February 2011 – Released February 8, 2011
• Non-Security Updates for January 2011 – Released January 11, 2011
• Office 2010 December 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2479673) – Released December 14, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for December 2010 – Released December 14, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for November 2010 – Released November 9, 2010
• Office 2010 October 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2449183) – Released October 26, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for October 2010 – Released October 12, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for September 2010 – Released September 14, 2010
• Office 2010 August 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2396341) – Released August 31, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for August 2010 – Released August 10, 2010
• Security and Non-Security Updates for July 2010 – Released July 13, 2010
• Office 2010 June 2010 Cumulative Update (KB 2259686) – Released June 29, 2010

Be sure to stay tuned to the Office and SharePoint team blogs in the coming weeks for important details of the SP1 release.

Today the Windows team released an update which adds support for the new rupee currency symbol for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find more information about the update at KB2496898.

What Does This Update Mean for Office Users?

This update will allow users to input, view, print, and use the new symbol as the default symbol for data formatted as Indian currency, such as in Access fields, Excel cells, or the currency column in SharePoint lists.

The Windows update touches three main areas that will help Office users.

1. Updates the following font families: Microsoft Sans Serif, Times New Roman, Arial, Segoe, and Tahoma.

2. Updates the 13 Indic local keyboards to input the rupee using the Ctrl+Shift+4. On the new English (India) keyboard, the AltGr+4 key combination will input the new symbol. More on adding or changing your input language.

3. Updates the locale information so that the new symbol is automatically used for items formatted as currency, such as in Access fields, Excel cells, or the currency column in SharePoint lists. More on changing the country or region settings.

Typing the Rupee Symbol

If you don’t have a keyboard that supports the rupee symbol, you can insert the rupee currency symbol by using one of the following methods.

Using Alt-X

Type 20B9, and then hold down the ALT key and press X. (Supported by OneNote, and Outlook WordMail, and Word.)

Important: Some of the Microsoft Office programs, such as PowerPoint and InfoPath, cannot convert Unicode codes to characters. If you need a Unicode character and are using one of the programs that doesn't support Unicode characters, use the Character Map to enter the character(s) that you need.

Insert Symbol

Supported by Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook WordMail, PowerPoint, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, and Word

Insert a symbol

1. Click where you want to insert the symbol.

2. On the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click Symbol.

3. Do one of the following:

· Click the symbol that you want in the drop-down list.

· If the symbol that you want to insert is not in the list, click More Symbols. In the Font box, click the font that you want, click the symbol that you want to insert, and then click Insert.

· Note If you are using an expanded font, such as Arial or Times New Roman, the Subset list appears. Use this list to choose from an extended list of language characters, including Greek and Russian (Cyrillic), if available.

4. Click Close.

Using Character Map

Character Map is a program built into Microsoft Windows that enables you to view the characters that are available in a selected font. Using Character Map, you can copy individual characters or a group of characters to the Clipboard and paste them into any program that can display them.

For more information about the Character Map, see Using special characters (Character Map): frequently asked questions.

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map.

To select a character in the Character Map, click the character, click Select, click the right mouse button in your document where you want the character, and then click Paste.

Printing the Rupee Currency Symbol

If your printer does not have the rupee currency symbol in any of its resident fonts, a box will be printed instead of the rupee currency symbol. Contact your printer vendor to find out how to get updated printer fonts that include the rupee currency symbol. You can also adjust your printer setup not to use resident fonts. Look for an option called Print fonts as graphics in printer setup properties.

Known Issues

Font Fall Back

If you are using a font that doesn’t contain the new symbol, then your application may not be able to render the character. The work around is to change the font for that one character. We are aware of the issue and are working on a fix.

SharePoint 2007

The Windows update does not fix .NET 3.5 in some scenarios and therefore SharePoint 2007 currency fields will not default to the new symbol. We are working to address this issue.

Office 2010 Web App

Due to a known browser limitation, users will not be able to type the new rupee symbol in Internet Explorer when font is not specified (for example, in the address bar or Web App Find text box).

We were recently made aware of the exploit in the wild for Adobe Flash Player. The exploit itself is in the Flash player, but it was brought to our attention that Excel has been used to help deliver .swf file. Our Security Research & Defense team released a blog on mitigations along with how Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can be used to help with this issue.

We wanted to provide you with a little bit more information on how one can prevent ActiveX controls from being run within Microsoft Office applications.

In Office 2010 you can use Security Settings for ActiveX controls for Office 2010 to determine which options best fits your scenario. This includes turning off all ActiveX controls from being run in Office to setting specific controls that won’t run in Office only, but allow them to load into Internet Explorer. This is very similar to the Internet Explorer Killbit, but for Office Applications only.

For Office 2007, it is very similar to 2010 Configure Security settings for ActiveX controls points out how you can disable ActiveX controls across all of Office. In MS10-036 we did the work to have the ability to prevent controls from loading within Office only.

MS10-036 also provided us the opportunity to update 2003 as well. After installing MS10-036 you will have the ability to create the Office Killbit list again using the steps listed in KB2252664.

Thank You,

Modesto Estrada

We discussed some basics of the Office Support Policy in a prior post, explaining how Office versions have a 5 year window of Mainstream Support, and an additional 5 years of Extended Support. One of our releases is now at the end of its life cycle; this post is a reminder to those still using Office XP that the end of support for this version is near.

On July 11, 2011, Office XP will exit the Extended Support period.

The chart above reflects the end of support for the main Office XP Release versions. The full detail is spelled out under the link.

What does “end of support” mean? The end of support means that we will no longer provide public fixes for the Office XP release. Automatic Updates that ship on “Patch Tuesday” will be discontinued. There will be no effect on installed software; products will still continue to function.

What options do Office XP users have?

Microsoft recommends that customers keep their systems secure by upgrading to the latest, supported product and/or service pack, such as Microsoft Office 2010. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and Office 2003 Service Pack 3 are also supported for the duration outlined in the Support Lifecycle Product Database.

For our Premier Support customers, a Custom Support program is available. The support team has posted a useful web page about available options for retired product support. They have also published a good FAQ page to explain some of the background on the support policy.

For more information, consult these resources:

· Retired Product Support Options
· Microsoft Services Premier Support
· Microsoft Services Premier Support – Custom Support
· Support Lifecycle Information for all Office Products
· Office XP Support Lifecycle
· Microsoft Support Lifecycle