Today the availability of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system was announced. The service pack includes major performance enhancements for Office applications, most notably Microsoft Office Outlook, as well as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. One big benefit is SP2’s boost to interoperability — with this release, Office supports additional built-in file formats such as PDF and ODF.
2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) gives customers the latest updates for the 2007 Office suite. This service pack includes two main categories of fixes:
- Previously unreleased fixes that were made specifically for this service pack.
- In addition to general product fixes, these fixes include improvements in stability, in performance, and in security.
All the public updates, security updates, cumulative updates, and hotfixes that were released through February 2009.
Overview of Service Pack 2 (SP2) improvements
Description of some big areas of improvement that are included in SP2.
Microsoft Office Access
Lets you export reports to Microsoft Office Excel.
Supports memo fields in the mailing label wizard for addresses.
Fixes issues that occur in the import data wizards, in report printing and previewing, in macros, in Excel integration, and in date filters.
Includes updates to Access Developer Extensions.
Microsoft Office Excel
- Improves the charting mechanism in Excel 2007. This includes better parity with Office 2003, improved robustness, and targeted performance improvements.
- Adds a chart object model to Word and to PowerPoint.
- Improves shapes that are surfaced in Excel. This includes better parity with Office 2003 and targeted performance improvements.
- Improves the method by which Excel prints graphical content, especially when it prints to PCL printers.
- Adds conversion rates to the Excel Euro Currency Tools add-in for the Maltese lira and for the Cypriot pound.
Microsoft Office Groove
- Improves Groove 2007 form tools. In particular, international users in certain locales will benefit from correct interpretation of spaces for digit grouping in currency values.
- Limits the number of file-sharing workspaces to 64 to make sure that all workspaces can be synchronized. This limit applies only to adding new file-sharing workspaces. If you already have more than 64 file-sharing workspaces, you can continue to use them.
- Optimizes synchronization reliability.
Microsoft Office InfoPath
- Fixes for overall security and stability in InfoPath 2007
- Provides improved compatibility between InfoPath forms and other Microsoft products, such as Groove and Outlook.
Microsoft Office OneNote
- Improves SharePoint sync functionality. This helps reduce the load on SharePoint servers, and it helps produce fewer sync errors.
- If the OneNote tray notification icon was previously dismissed, the icon will now appear in the notification area. Additionally, this icon can now be dismissed only in the Options dialog box in OneNote.
- Adds support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for the Japanese language.
Microsoft Office Outlook
Performance improvements that apply to the following general responsiveness areas:
- Startup -Removes lengthy operations from initial startup.
- Shutdown – Makes Outlook exit predictably despite pending activities.
- Folder View and Switch – Improves view rendering and folder switching.
Calendar improvements
- Improves underlying data structures and the general reliability of calendar updates.
Data file checks
- Greatly reduces the number of scenarios in which you receive the following error message when you start Outlook: The data file ‘file name’ was not closed properly. This file is being checked for problems.
Search reliability
- Improves search reliability when you use SP2 with Windows Desktop Search 4 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/choose/windowssearch4.mspx) .
Improvements to Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
- There are now fewer duplicated items.
- Object Model improvements – Now contains many customer-driven fixes.
For more information about these improvements and details about other Outlook fixes, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 968774 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968774/ ) Outlook 2007 improvements in the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2
Microsoft Office PowerPoint
- Improves the control of shape editing while you are zoomed in.
- Provides faster file resaves.
- Improves image quality after files are saved in the .jpeg, .png, and .gif formats.
- Provides better text representation when the representation is saved in earlier PowerPoint formats.
- Fixes several printer-specific problems.
- Provides better compatibility with Explorer preview in Windows Vista.
- Provides fuller integration of the Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model.
Microsoft Office Publisher
- Improves the printing of double-sided postcards and small booklets.
- Fixes issues in print preview, in HTML layout of grouped objects in Internet Explorer 8, in tab-stop, in e-mail, in content library, and in Design Checker.
Microsoft Office Word
- Improves the fidelity of .pdf and .xps output.
- Improves Outlook performance.
- Provides fuller integration of the Office Excel Chart Object Model.
Changes that affect multiple products
File formats
OpenDocument Format (ODF) support
- SP2 lets you open, edit, and save documents in version 1.1 of the ODF for Word (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/FX100649251033.aspx) , for Excel (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/FX100646951033.aspx) , and for PowerPoint (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/FX100648951033.aspx) . Users of these Office programs can now open, edit, and save files in the OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp) formats.
Extensible file formats
- Extensible File Formats: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now include a converter interface that lets you plug third-party custom file formats into these Office programs. A developer can create a converter for files of a particular extension. When this converter is installed on a user’s computer, the custom file format effectively behaves like a built-in file format. Specifically, users can open files of this format and save them by using the Open or Save UI. They can even set the custom format as their default file format. For more information, visit the following MSDN Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd300649.aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd300649.aspx)
Built-in Save As PDF/XPS support
- PDF/XPS support is built into SP2 for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users no longer have to download the add-in separately.
Office graphics
- Improves application performance when many graphic objects are present, especially for Excel 2007.
- Fixes several issues that involve the object model. These fixes let you better achieve parity with Office 2003 when the object model works with graphical objects.
- Increases printing fidelity of graphical objects in many scenarios.
- A new XML-based representation of each SmartArt graphic in a document is saved with the file to optimize interoperability. This new feature uses the standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic.
- Improves the Edit Points feature. This enables more accurate shape editing and increased interoperability with Office 2003.
Office security
- Fixes certain scenarios in which documents in trusted locations were treated as non-trusted.
- Improves several cryptographic or encryption scenarios.
- Provides a method to ignore time stamping expiration.
- Provides better security warnings when a certificate is revoked.
- An updated password algorithm that is in sync with the document ISO requirements.
- Provides an ISO-OOXML-compliant password verifier for Excel, for PowerPoint, and for Word.
- Enables smarter AVAPI blocking for encrypted macros.
Service pack removal
- 2007 Microsoft Office SP2 is the first service pack to support the removal of client updates through both the command line and the Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite. The Service Pack Uninstall Tool is available as a separate download.
- For more information about this tool, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 954914 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954914/ ) Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite
Input method editor (IME)
- Improves the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME). This includes improved conversion accuracy and improved self-learning functionality.
How to obtain and install the service packs
This service pack update is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To download the service pack, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5)
Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E1203DB2-1CC9-4809-9B6E-3F232CB8899F (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E1203DB2-1CC9-4809-9B6E-3F232CB8899F)
For a complete list of all released SP2 packages, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 968170 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968170/ ) List of all 2007 Office system Service Pack 2 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 packages
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