RSSMicrosoft to release Office 2007 SP1 via Automatic Update in June
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published May 9, 2008, 12:38 PM
Five months after the first service pack for Office 2007 was made generally available to customers, the company has determined it will be safe to provide it over its automatic update service.
The original intent of Automatic Updates was to ease the burden of ensuring clients had the latest software, especially security patches. But with the growing variety of permutations of Windows installations, any problems clients might find with their automatically updated systems can only be tracked and identified through extensive field testing.
So Microsoft waited a fairly significant period of time before enabling Office 2007 SP1 to be downloadable automatically, and may still wait six weeks longer, perhaps more, according to a post on Microsoft's Office Sustained Engineering blog late yesterday evening.
"The availability will happen gradually and not everyone will see it at the same time," the post reads. "Think of the 16th [of June] as the earliest possible start of distribution and that no sooner than that date will SP1 start to become available to customers' systems via this channel. This is necessary to ensure that our service infrastructure can meet the enormous demand for the service pack."
BetaNews tests of Office 2007 SP1, which began early this year, do show significantly improved reliability in key features, most notably with screen updates. Prior to SP1, Word 2007 had a perennial problem with losing track of its cursor locations after fast scrolls, such as rapid twists of the mouse wheel. After installation, we noted that instances of this problem were substantially reduced, though not yet eliminated; today, the problem seems to crop up only 10% as often as before.
Also, a problem with Excel 2007's being able to rapidly load spreadsheets to which third-party add-ins are attached, appears to have been completely eradicated in our tests.
If I minimize a Word or Excel document and then open another one, the minimized documents is no longer minimized, which defeats the whole purpose of minimizing it. -1 for Microsoft. Also, the office manager here gets an error if she opens an Excel document directly.
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Okay, two things:
MSFT uses a bad MDI implementation. Many are used to it, they aren't about to change it. While it may appear as many windows on the taskbar, it's actually one window, with each document instance displayed on the taskbar.
Second, it is possible but not recommended to "break" the MDI so one window/document does not affect another instance.
Start - Control Panel - Folder Options
Click File Types.
Select .Doc (or .XLS..etc)
Advanced - Select "Open" - Click Edit
Add "%1" (with the quotes) to the very end of the "application used to perform action" line.
Uncheck "Use DDE"
Click OK
Uncheck "Browse in same window".
Click Close.
Each doc should open in a separate window now and will no longer affect the states of any other document windows you have open.
PITA, but then again, most folks are used to the broken MDI now and would whine incessantly if it was "fixed".
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Went to try this, but cannot make it work for Vista.
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They better fix the - can't right-click on a image in an email and save".
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What would be nice if current users could purchase an SP1-updated copy of the office version for a nominal amount. Maybe you can. Anyone?
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I know you can order the CD with the Service pack (not integrated):
http://office.microsoft....ads/FX010383631033.aspx
and you can get the CD/DVD of the integrated suite (or anything, FTM), from them if you are a TechNet Plus subscriber:
http://technet.microsoft.../downloads/default.aspx
Other than that, you can download the SP and slipstream it into an Integrated Office 2007 Installation CD:
http://bink.nu/news/offi...n-slipstream-guide.aspx
Couldn't find a place to order one for a nominal fee for those who already own a copy.
Perhaps someone else's Google-Fu is superior to mine...
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