Office Sustained Engineering : Releases

November 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:42:00 GMT

On Tuesday, November 10th, 2009, Microsoft released 6 security updates. In Office we are addressing 11 security vulnerabilities with 2 security bulletins. The security updates apply to:

Microsoft Office Excel 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, described in security bulletin MS09-067.
Microsoft Office Word 2002, 2003, and Word Viewer 2003 as described in security bulletin MS09-068.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for November 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for November 2009" for IT professionals.

Microsoft also released two updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filter.

October 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:36:00 GMT

On Tuesday, October 13th, 2009, Microsoft released 11 security updates for Office addressing 11 security vulnerabilities in two security bulletins. The security updates apply to:

· Microsoft Office XP, 2003, and 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2002, 2003 and 2007, and Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007, as described in security bulletin MS09-060.

· Microsoft Office XP, 2003, and 2007, and Microsoft Visio 2002, as described in security bulletin MS09-062.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for October 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for October 2009" for IT professionals. Microsoft also released two updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filter.

As described in security bulletin MS09-060, Microsoft recommends all users of Visio Viewer 2002 and Visio Viewer 2003 upgrade to the latest version of Visio Viewer 2007 to address this security vulnerability. Users who are unable to upgrade should apply the update from MS09-034. This Internet Explorer update mitigates the attack vector for affected Visio Viewer platforms. Users may also install the cumulative security update for Internet Explorer (MS09-0xx), which provides kill bits for these controls. After you install MS09-060, you will need to upgrade to Visio Viewer 2007 and install the update described in this article to continue using Visio Viewer.

The Security Updates for Microsoft Office XP, 2003 and 2007 described in MS09-060 do not fix a security vulnerability. Instead, they resolve a problem that occurs after you install the Security Updates for Microsoft Office Outlook 2002, 2003 or 2007 described in this bulletin. The Security Updates for Outlook modify the CLSID of the Outlook View Control. This causes certain solutions based on Forms 2.0 that use the Outlook View Control to stop working, such as Business Contact Manager. The Security Updates for Microsoft Office XP, 2003 and 2007 update Forms 2.0 to work properly after the Security Updates to Outlook are installed.

Note: PowerPoint Viewer 2003 has left support as of today. To continue receiving updates, please install PowerPoint Viewer 2007.

September 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:17:00 GMT

On Tuesday, September 8^th, 2009, Microsoft released updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters. No security updates for Office were released.

August 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:47:00 GMT

On Tuesday, August 11th, 2009, Microsoft released three security updates for Office Web Components addressing four security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to Microsoft Office 2000, XP, and 2003 Web Components, as described in security bulletin MS09-043. These updates address the issue discussed in security advisory 973472. For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for August 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for August 2009" for IT professionals.

As previously discussed in the post Office Web Components Lifecycle, there are three versions of Office Web Components, and each version was also released as part of the next version of Office. So Office 2000 Web Components released both as part of Office 2000 and part of Office XP. The following table maps the different versions of Office Web Components to the updates needed for those versions:

OWC Version	From Product	Patch Needed
2000	Office XP	KB947320
XP (2002)	Office XP, web download	KB947320
XP (2002)	Office 2003	KB947319
2003	Office 2003, web download (versions 1-3)	KB947319
2003	Web download (version 4), Project Server 2007, SQL Server 2008*	KB947318

*Project Server 2007 includes the installation package for the Office 2003 Web Components so that clients who connect to the server can automatically install the Office Web Components. Project Server installations are not vulnerable to the security vulnerability and do not need to install any updates.

**SQL Server 2008 includes the installation package for the Office 2003 Web Components for use in SQL Server client-side functionality. Most server installations will not contain Office Web Components and will not need to be updated.

Note: Office 2000 is no longer in support.

Microsoft also released two updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filter.

June 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:31:00 GMT

On Tuesday, June 9th, 2009, Microsoft released 17 security updates for Office in 3 bulletins addressing 11 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (32 bit, 64 bit), as described in security bulletin MS09-021.
Microsoft Office Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Word Viewer 2003, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS09-027.
Microsoft Office 2000, XP, and 2007, as described in security bulletin MS09-024.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for June 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for June 2009" for IT professionals.

Microsoft also released two updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filter and an update to Outlook. The update to Outlook resolves an issue that occurs when you attempt to save after you edit a meeting request with Service Pack 2 installed. If certain fields, such as the list of meeting attendees, are edited, you will be prompted to either save and notify the meeting attendees or not save. If you choose not to save, your changes are lost. This update resolves that issue. The update, which will install successfully if either Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 is installed, also delivers many of the Outlook performance enhancements in Service Pack 2 to users who are not yet ready to install the service pack.

Starting August 1, 2009, Microsoft will discontinue support for Office Update and the Office Update Inventory Tool. To continue getting the latest updates for Microsoft Office products, use Microsoft Update. For more information see the FAQ.

May 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:52:00 GMT

On Tuesday, May 12th, 2009, Microsoft released 7 security updates for Office in 1 bulletin addressing 14 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, PowerPoint Viewer 2003, PowerPoint Viewer 2007, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-017. These updates address the issue described in Microsoft Security Advisory 969136.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for May 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for May 2009" for IT professionals.

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System due to ship April 28th

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:50:00 GMT

Last October, we announced the upcoming release of the 2nd service pack for the 2007 Microsoft Office System and the 2007 Microsoft Office servers. Today, we’re happy to provide both a formal release date, and more details on what you should expect to see in SP2.

A fair amount has been said about SP2 already, but there is a lot more to share. We’ll cover the highlights here, but please check back on April 28th when all of our documentation will be published. It is important to remember that the information provided today is by no means a comprehensive list. We worked with the individual teams in Office to come up with a list of changes that they were most proud of and felt would be most beneficial to you, our valued customers.

In addition to the numerous product improvements introduced by SP2, you may also notice that our SP2 documentation has been overhauled. Gone are the days of the long-winded or too sparse knowledge base articles that do little to describe what’s included in the actual service pack or that include details that may not be what you are looking for. In their place are what we hope are more user-friendly and informative KB’s. The technical information still exists, but it has been pulled from the main KB articles and now will live on TechNet. And, back by popular demand, is the spreadsheet listing individual bugs that were fixed across all of our products.

The Service Pack team would like to express our sincere thanks to the many beta testers who took the time to download, install, test, and provide feedback to us. This was the largest beta we’ve done to date for an Office service pack with thousands of beta testers from over 60 countries. We know your time is extremely valuable, and we very much appreciate all you’ve done. Your efforts have helped to make this a great release!

Don’t forget to come back on April 28th. We’ll have a comprehensive list of everything we’ve released, where you can find it, and links to additional information. A brief note, some of the information posted earlier needed clarification. We have made slight modifications to the information below.

Very sincerely,

The Office Service Pack team

We’ll start with updates that pertain to multiple products, highlight fixes to the individual desktop applications, and then discuss fixes to the server products.

Changes that impact desktop applications

Service Pack 2 adds the ability to open, edit and save documents in version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. These applications now let users save, open, and edit files as OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp).
The 2007 Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 is the first service pack to support uninstall of client updates through the Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite as well as via Windows Installer command line. The Service Pack Uninstall Tool will be available as a separate download.
The Microsoft Save As PDF or XPS add-in has been built into Office applications in SP2. Users no longer have to download and install the add-in separately.
When many graphic objects are present performance has been improved.
In many scenarios, expect increased print fidelity of graphical objects.
Improved interoperability using standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic.
Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SPD.

The 2007 Office Suite SP2 has been tested and is supported for Internet Explorer 8. Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7 and Windows Server R2 will all be supported upon their release.

Access

The ability to export reports to Excel has been added.
Fixes for issues with the import data wizards, report printing and previewing, macros, Excel integration, and date filters.
Updates to Access Developer Extensions are now included in SP2.

Excel

The charting mechanism has improved robustness and targeted performance improvements.
A chart object model has been added to Word and PowerPoint.
Improved printing of graphical content, especially on PCL printers.

Groove

Improved form tools.
Synchronization reliability has been improved.

InfoPath

Increased compatibility between InfoPath forms and other Microsoft products, such as Groove and Outlook.

OneNote

SharePoint synchronization has been improved which helps reduce the load on SharePoint servers and produce fewer errors.

Outlook

Performance in startup, shutdown, view rendering, and folder switch has been improved.
Calendar updates, search, and RSS are more reliable.
The object model has been improved.

PowerPoint

Resaving of files is faster. Several printer-specific problems have been fixed.
The Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model has been more fully integrated.

Project

The scheduling engine, Active Cache, and Gantt charts all have improvements.
There is additional reliability with earlier versions of the .mpp format.

Publisher

Fixes have been made in the following areas: print preview, compatibility with Internet Explorer 8, e-mail on Windows Vista, and saving to the Content library.

Visio

Improved compatibility with other Microsoft products in several key scenarios, such as inserting Visio drawings as linked objects in PowerPoint or Word, exporting reports to Excel, and saving drawings as Web pages for browsing in Internet Explorer 8.

Word

Fidelity of PDF and XPS output has been enhanced compared to the output created through the use of the download.
Better integration of the Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model.

Changes that impact the server products

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

Excel Services

SP2 makes it easier to configure Excel Web Access Web Parts on new sites.
Several rendering, calculation, and security issues have been resolved.
Some display issues have been addressed.
Improved compatibility with Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Groove Server

Improved synchronization reliability.
Groove Server 2007 Manager will install and run with SQL 2008.
Groove’s LDAP connectivity and auto-activation functionality have been improved.
Error reporting in the Groove Relay Server has improved significantly.
Groove Relay Server has improved robustness.

Forms Server

Memory requirements and the page load times for large browser-rendered forms have been reduced.
Browser rendering of various controls, such as the 'cannot be blank' asterisk and the rich text field has been improved.

Project Server

Better memory management in the queue service.
Performance to certain database table indexes is improved.
Resource plans, build team, cost resources, and the server scheduling engine have improved.

Search Server

Improvements to the reliability and stability of very large corpus crawls.
Backup-restore has been improved.
A new command has been introduced to the stsadm.exe tool that lets a SharePoint Administrator to tune the Query processor multiplier parameter.
Improved accuracy in searches involving numbers.

Note: Two minor changes were made on April 22, 2009 to the original post of this blog. The changes were: Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication was moved to the desktop section and support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePointDesigner was added to the sentence. Windows Server R2 was changed to Windows Server 2008 R2.

April 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:41:00 GMT

On Tuesday, April 14th, 2009, Office released 10 security updates in 2 bulletins addressing a total of 4 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-009. These updates address the issue described in Microsoft Security Advisory 968272.
Microsoft Office Converters 2000 and 2002, as described in security bulletin MS08-010. These updates fix issues related to Microsoft Security Advisory 960906.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for April 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for April 2009" for advanced users.

March 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:02:00 GMT

On Tuesday, March 10^th, 2009, Office released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters. No security updates for Office were released.

February 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

On Tuesday, February 10^th, 2009, Office released 3 security updates in 1 bulletin addressing 3 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to Microsoft Office Visio 2002, 2003 and 2007. For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for February 2009" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for February 2009" for advanced users. Office also released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters.

January 2009 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:09:00 GMT

On Tuesday, January, 13^th, 2009, Office released updates to the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters. No security updates for Office were released.

December 2008 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:46:00 GMT

On Tuesday, December 9^th, 2008, Office released 18 security updates in 4 bulletins addressing a total of 15 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-074.
Microsoft Office Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Word Viewer 2003, and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-072.
Microsoft Office XP, Project 2003, and Project 2007, as described in security bulletin MS08-070. Note: the security update for Office XP is available in the Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Traditional Taiwan), and Korean locales only. Other locales of Office XP are not affected.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 32-bit edition and 64-bit edition, as described in security bulletin MS08-077.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for December 2008" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for December 2008" for advanced users. Office also released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters.

Office also released an update to Office 2003. This update fixes a problem that prevents Office patches from installing when the Office Source Engine (OSE) service is disabled, which is one of the most common reasons for Office patches to fail to install. The Office Source Engine is used by Office to manage Office files during patch installation and is required for patch installation to succeed. After installing the update, the OSE service will run and patches will install successfully even if the service is disabled. If you are using Microsoft Update, Automatic Updates, Windows Server Update Services, or any other deployment tool that uses the Microsoft Update agent, the update will only be offered to your system if the Office Source Engine service is disabled. The update available from the Microsoft Download Center will install on all Office 2003 client systems. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you may need to restart your computer after installing the update for it to take effect.

November 2008 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:31:00 GMT

On Tuesday, November 11^th, 2008, Office released 4 security updates in one bulletin. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 32-bit edition and 64-bit edition, as described in security bulletin MS08-069.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for November 2008" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for November 2008" for advanced users. Office also released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters.

Office also released 11 optional updates to Office Help. These updates allow you to access the latest documentation for Office when you are not connected to the internet. The updates are:

Announcing New Daylight Saving Time Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:54:00 GMT

Microsoft has released an update to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (x86, x64). This update provides the latest time zone definitions. For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB956612 and the Microsoft SharePoint Team blog.

October 2008 Update Release

The Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering Team — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:34:00 GMT

On Tuesday, October 14^th, 2008, Office released 9 security updates across 2 bulletins. The security updates apply to the following products:

Microsoft Office Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, as described in security bulletin MS08-057.
Microsoft Office XP, as described in security bulletin MS08-056.

For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for October 2008" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for October 2008" for advanced users. Office also released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters.

Office also released Security Update for the Access Snapshot Viewer, as described in security bulletin MS08-041. This update applies to the Download Center edition of the Access Snapshot Viewer.