Office 2007 SP2 only days away

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 16 Apr 2009 at 10:02

Microsoft has confirmed the second service pack for its popular Office 2007 suite will arrive on 28 April.

The service pack will be rolled out to users through Windows Update, and represents the first update to Office since December 2007.

The headline feature of SP2 is the ability to open, save and edit files in the Open Document Format which will be folded into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. SP2 will also integrate the "Save As PDF/XPS" command into the suite.

Microsoft's also touting performance improvements in the cumbersome Outlook email client and the ability to uninstall service pack elements using a separate utility and the Windows command line.

As with all service packs, SP2 includes all bug fixes and security patches released since Microsoft rolled out its first service pack in 2007.

The company's also promising to revamp the documentation that usually accompanies service packs in order to make it more "more user-friendly and informative."

"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," the Office team says on its blog.

"In their place are what we hope are more user-friendly and informative KBs. And, back by popular demand, is the spreadsheet listing individual bugs that were fixed across all of our products."

In a separate announcement, Microsoft has also confirmed that Office 2010 will be made available in the first half of next year.