Office 2000 and Office Update Site to Retire

Microsoft Office 2000 support ending July 14, 2009; alongwith Office Update site

Microsoft Office 2000 support ending July 14, 2009; alongwith Office Update site — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:15:20 GMT

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re: Office 2000 and Office Update Site to Retire

David Patterson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:58:45 GMT

I am very disappointed to see Office Update retired without Microsoft Update providing equivalent function! I use Active Directory GPO to deploy Office from an administrative installation point (AIP). If I applied patches to my AIP and redeployed, only Office Update would correctly detect that the updates were already installed on client PC's. MS Update & WSUS continue to show the updates as needed, so I would continue to use Office Update to see which updates were REALLY needed. I keep hoping that the detection logic in MS Update will be fixed to resolve this.

What allowed Office update to correctly detect which updates were needed, and why can't MS Update be fixed to provide this same accurate info?

re: Office 2000 and Office Update Site to Retire

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:00:16 GMT

Hello David,

I'm sorry to hear you're encountering this issue. As you mentioned, deploying patches to the AIP to deploy to client systems is no longer supported. To update your clients, the recommended method is to update (or revert) the AIP to the latest service pack level, recache the clients, then update the clients directly using Microsoft Update or a related technology, such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). You may find this webcast about using WSUS to update Office 2003 helpful in making this transition: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032273703&CountryCode=US. You can find more information about maintaining Office AIPs without using Office Update at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/FX010402221033.aspx#8. I recognize that this may require you to change the way you update your clients and apologize for any inconvenience.

Office Update and Microsoft Update use different technologies for detection of applicable updates. The Office Update technology, although it worked for AIPs, had significant drawbacks for system administrators in resiliency and auditing. Microsoft Update detection is much more robust and we’ve found that customers who have moved to a MU-based technology like WSUS have a significantly better experience.

Sincerely,

David Seidman

Program Manager, Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team