Microsoft releases Office 2007 SP1

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 11 Dec 2007 at 14:50

Microsoft has launched the first Service Pack for Office 2007.

The pack is essentially a compendium of the bug fixes that have been issued for Office since its launch, almost exactly a year ago.

The fixes include a patch for the the embarrassing Excel calculation bug, security tweaks for Communicator and improvements to Outlook's performance when handling large PST files.

There are no new features as such, although SP1 does include support for Sharepoint on the forthcoming Windows Server 2008.

"This is an aggregation of all the patches since launch," says Darren Strange, the UK product manager for Office 2007. "We've taken the decision to nail the top five stability bugs in each [Office] product."

The Service Pack may not add much for users who upgrade Office through the automatic update procedure, as many of the fixes will already have been applied. "People shouldn't be waiting for service packs to apply these kind of fixes," says Strange, adding that SP1 is largely intended for corporates who want to evaluate and roll-out the numerous patches in one hit, rather than test each one individually.

Service Pack 1 is available from the Office Update site.