Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Kiosk
UPDATE: The links for the downloads for SP2 are in the process of replicating across mirrors for our WW download center. The download links are expected to be live at around 11:00AM PDT.
Update: The download links for SP2 are now live.
The Office development team has been pretty busy with the Service Pack 2 release (SP2). This is a monster Service Pack release for Office. The Sustaining Engineering blog for Office has quite a bit of the background, but I wanted to raise awareness on a few key aspects of the release, partially for the world-at-large, but more for the developer audience. Allow me to staple a handful of worthy links on my blog to get you started on the depth of data available about SP2.
Depending on your perspective, many things in this Service Pack are of significance. From a personal standpoint, the arrival of ODF 1.1 is something that I am very happy to see. I have also been pleased to see Microsoft step up when it comes to interoperability in the document format space through its publication of the ODF Implementers Notes in December, its publication of the Open XML implementers notes in January and its ongoing support for the Document Interoperability Initiative and a range of other activities. It has been 425 days since we posted our Interoperability principles, and it is great to see us sustaining that commitment and continuing to exceed expectations.
First, some basics
· Where can I download SP2? – You can pop up to Microsoft Update and install the bits
· Where can I learn about what is in SP2? – Here
· What files / DLL’s / exes have been changed? – learn about that here
· Is this an Automatic Update? – Not yet. For the first 90 days (at least the first 90), service packs are made available as a manual download. After 90 days and with a 30 day notice, Service Packs are offered through the Automatic Update channel as a critical update.
Save as ODF 1.1 for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
OpenDocument 1.1 (ODF) has been added as an available file format for saving documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Doug Mahugh has covered this extensively in his blog, and the ODF 1.1 implementer’s notes have also been available for a while. We first announced our intent to add ODF to the list of supported file types over a year ago. It is great to see this activity come to fruition. I’m especially pleased / surprised at the level of engagement from folks in the ODF community, helping talk through some of the harder parts of the installation. In case you are observing the feature-level impact of saving to ODF in Office, you can visit the links below to learn more about how ODF in Office will behave.
· PowerPoint: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA102877231033.aspx
· Excel: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA102877221033.aspx
· Word: https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA102835631033.aspx
Save as PDF and XPS
Many have seen our announcement a few years back about the addition of PDF and XPS to the list of supported file types of Office 2007. This add-in was originally offered a free download for Office 2007, but SP2 has taken that a step forward and added the bits to the release – no longer a manual download. PDF export functionality will continue to support the creation of PDF 1.5 documents, as well as the ability to generate PDF/A – IS19005 compliant files.
File format converter API
Stephen Peront has an excellent post which illustrates how to use this new interface. The converter API is an extension of our strategy to support file format choice in our products. It enables solution developers to register a new file type for Office, so that it appears in the file type drop-down dialog box for saving documents next to the other 18 that you now get in the box. In a way this will help developers “future proof” Office desktops for new document format standards that may emerge.
Charting Object Model for Word and PowerPoint
An area of pain for users of Office charting has been addressed. A charting Object Model (OM) for Word and PowerPoint has been added to align with the charting support in Excel. Many customers expressed a need to programmatically insert, manipulate the size, and set the formatting of the charts similar to what was provided in the Office 2003 release. Potentially managing charts programmatically across the three core applications could save workforces thousands of hours of manual labor, depending on the level of complexity and content re-usage taking place. For more information on the changes to the Word and PowerPoint OM’s for Charting, look at this post from David Hale on the Office Developer Content blog.
Cryptographic Agility
Today Vista supports a feature / interface commonly referred to as Cryptographic Next Generation (CNG). Essentially this refers to a capability of Vista which (among other things) allows you to swap crypto providers without breaking your solutions, or perhaps to help future-proof Office 2007 installations about encryption algorithms that may emerge in the future. Office 2007 SP2 has been updated to support the same CNG functionality when installed on Vista. This provides the capability to swap crypto providers for Office documents. This was done in part to help people who desire to implement Suite-B encryption for Office documents. David LeBlanc has written an excellent post describing this addition in depth.
Outlook Performance
One of the most important end user benefits of the SP2 release is the improvement in Outlook performance. I have been dogfooding SP2 for over a month now, and I can attest personally to the life improvement that these changes bring J. I think if you asked the Outlook team, they’d be quick to tell you that SP2 is an update you should install as soon as you can.
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 data structures and the 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. “
Office Service Pack Uninstall Tool
Traditionally, you cannot uninstall Microsoft Office service packs without completely uninstalling the Microsoft Office products. The new Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite (Oarpman.exe) lets you uninstall all the updates for the 2007 Office desktop products that are included in the 2007 Office suite SP2. The Service Pack uninstall tool will be available on the Microsoft Download Center as a free download.
You can use this tool to streamline the removal of all the client updates or individually
- Sample command line: “msiexec /i { MSI GUID } MSIPATCHREMOVE={ Patch GUID } /l*vx Path of the log file “
Other enhancements of possible significance
- SmartArt® Graphics & Charting
o Better rendering performance
o Better printing fidelity
o Fixes issues in the object model to achieve better parity with Office 2003
o Improves the Edit Points feature. This enables more accurate shape editing and increased interoperability with Office 2003
- Microsoft Office Access
o Lets you export reports to Microsoft Office Excel
o Fixes issues that occur in the import data wizards,
o Fixes issues in report printing and previewing
o Fixes issues in macros, in Excel integration, and in date filters
- Microsoft Office Groove
o 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.
- Microsoft Office Word
o Improves the fidelity of .pdf and .xps output
o Improves Outlook (Word editor) performance
If you want to learn more:
Lots of folks will have lots to say about SP2 – they should; it’s a big release. Here are some links to great blogs that you can read. The table below contains a link to the KB articles & downloads for each product to be released.
Office Client Products |
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The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 |
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Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Project 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Project Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Visio Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Proofing Tools 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Access Runtime and Data Connectivity Components 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Calendar Printing Assistant for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office InterConnect 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack Service Pack 2 |
|
Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
PowerPoint Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Visio Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Office Language Interface Pack 2007 Service Pack 2 |
|
Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite |
|
Office server products |
|
The 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2 |
|
The 2007 Microsoft Office servers Service Pack 2, 64-bit edition |
|
The 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2 |
|
The 2007 Microsoft Office servers Language Pack Service Pack 2, 64-bit edition |
|
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 products |
|
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 |
|
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2, 64-bit edition |
|
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2 |
|
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack Service Pack 2, 64-bit edition |
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Microsoft has released 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) which provides the latest updatesAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office system includes major performance enhancements forAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Read this first if you're looking for SP2 details: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2009/04/27/office-2007-service-pack-2-kiosk.aspxAnonymous
January 01, 2003
  Hoje, a Microsoft anunciou a disponibilidade do Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2), comAnonymous
January 01, 2003
From Microsoft: Today Microsoft is releasing Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system. ThisAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Credit goes to Gray Knowlton for writing this very comprehensive post on the service pack release. Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Se poate descărca de pe Microsoft Update . Cele mai importante goodies din acest SP, după părerea meaAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Maro, why don't you use the "Email" button on this blog (at the top), which will give me your contact info and we'll follow up to see what can be done. GrayAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Updated. April 28, 2009. Office 2007 SP2 is available for download. For more information: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2009/04/27/office-2007-service-pack-2-kiosk.aspxAnonymous
April 29, 2009
Important! After installation of the SP2, when I save word documents with embedded Visio drawings that contain gradient color fills, to pdf, the result is that the drawings in the pdf file are corrupted. The gradient fills are misplaced in a weird way. Now I do not know what to do to fix it. Can anybody help me?