Filed under: Software Update
Office 2004 Service Pack 2
Wow, not sure how this one slipped by us, but Microsoft this week released Service Pack 2 for Office 2004. This 57 MB update "provides numerous performance and security updates to Office 2004, along with significant enhancements to Exchange Server support in Entourage 2004." Microsoft offers a good overview of what's updated and fixed across all the Office apps at the Mactopia download site, and there's a readme included with the update that really spells it all out in detail. It looks like you have to go grab the update yourself, as it doesn't show up in my copy of Microsoft AutoUpdate.On a bit of a sidenote: the BetaNews article I found this at mentions the possibility that the big updates to Exchange Server support could allow Macs to make a bit more headway into businesses. Any TUAW readers who work for or maybe admin Macs in the workplace care to chime in on this? Will this update gives Macs a bigger foot in the door of your organization?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Beverly said 1:36PM on 12-05-2005
Well, suddenly (and surprisingly) the Color Bullets REAPPEARED today!! All is well.
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Damien Barrett said 2:15PM on 9-22-2005
It *was* showing up in AutoUpdate but last night at some point stopped appearing. Not sure if this means that MS has pulled it, or just just pulled it from the AutoUpdate feature. As always, YMMV, but this is what I've seen on quite a number of Macs already, all on differnet networks.
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soundboy64 said 2:36PM on 9-22-2005
It slipped passed you, because you guys are more worried about opinion blogging on why you don't like the ROKR than news reporting... It's been on every other Mac RSS feed of mine since tuesday....
sB
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Trevor Klassen said 2:37PM on 9-22-2005
I found and downloaded it a couple days ago - it appears to have updated everything successfully. However, it didn't solve an issue we have with Excel in which Excel cannot open any files that reside on a remote volume. Very frustrating.
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TJ said 2:56PM on 9-22-2005
Still no Out of Office Auto-Respond. REALLY?!
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Shane said 3:04PM on 9-22-2005
My question is:
When will Spotlight support searching inside of MS Office documents (Entourage e-mails, word docs, spreadsheets, etc.)?
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cpryce said 3:49PM on 9-22-2005
The enhancements to Entourage make it a much better counterpart to Outlook with Exchange, like the ability to see other people's folders, set permission on your server folders, claim that you are a delegate and assign delegates, much faster Exchange synchronization, etc. In other words, it's worth it for a lot of people now. Just came out, and these features are so "new" for Entourage, that there may be some more bug fixes in store, but it's a great step forward for Mac users in an Exchange world. Whether an organizations Exchange IT people will want to let Entourage jump on the bandwagon is a different question. At least I'm happy for myself.
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Conor Hastings said 3:46PM on 9-22-2005
Spotlight does search inside of word docs for me.
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Greg said 5:24PM on 9-22-2005
Does it still lack native Exchange server support? Entourage only connects through Exchange's webmail interface (http calls).
Can someone confirm if it can now connect without a webmail service?
Greg
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Mike said 9:36PM on 9-22-2005
Greg -- Entourage is still a WebDAV client, not MAPI, and will require that OWA is available on your Exchange (2000 or 2003) server. That said, SP2 is a ***huge*** leap forward in Exchange support on Mac OS X, which is now finally approaching parity with the last true MAPI client for the Mac, Outlook 2001 -- still the gold standard and used, in Classic, at many large Exchange sites.
I was present at a briefing with the Mac BU program manager and other MS representatives, and it really does seem that they have been listening to the concerns in the Mac marketplace with regard to Exchange integration. SP2 is not a magic bullet, but it does provide a great deal of the functionality that we've been looking for prior to rolling out Entourage to our users.
I happen to know that one of the TUAW blogging team is going to be intimately involved in an Entourage SP2 rollout shortly... looking forward to future posts. :-)
Now, if only the OWA rich client would work in Firefox and not just in @!$%&# IE 6 on XP!
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Bo Link said 10:48AM on 9-23-2005
These enhancements do increase the functionality of Entourage. The only thing I don't understand is why they can't get the free/busy function working when I'm trying to plan a meeting. I've read that it works for some and not for others. If they could get this working along with the Out-of-Office reply, I'd be a happy camper. I'm just afraid the Microsoft might start abandoning Office 2004 in favor of a newer release.
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Beverly said 10:43AM on 9-25-2005
I installed SP2 yesterday and to my disappointment, in Entourage, I no longer have the color bullets associated with my Projects. So when I open my Inbox the Project names are associated with an email but no more color bullets to quickly identify them. I spent an hour with customer support and they finally figured out that this feature is not available with SP2. Does this bother anyone else. I've written to mswish@microsoft.com but not sure if the engineers will add it in the next update. Any thoughts?
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Beverly said 11:10AM on 9-25-2005
I installed SP2 yesterday and to my disappointment, in Entourage, I no longer have the color bullets associated with my Projects. So when I open my Inbox the Project names are associated with an email but no more color bullets to quickly identify them. I spent an hour with customer support and they finally figured out that this feature is not available with SP2. Does this bother anyone else. I've written to mswish@microsoft.com but not sure if the engineers will add it in the next update. Any thoughts?
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MacDoug said 11:16AM on 9-27-2005
Interesting, after I updated blindly i still have the Project colored bullets, but the first thing that i noticed was that I no longer had a single Calendar that sync'd up only the "work" items with the exchange server, i.e. i could see my entire life on the one calendar, BUT now I have TWO calendars...On my Computer and Exchange!! so everything I had labeled 'work' was now on a different exchange calendar so i had to go back and manually put things back so i could see everything at a glance instead of being forced to toggle between two windows. additionally, why in the world would they get rid of Directory Services in the Tools menu? DS can't be found anywhere...i no longer have the ability to find people in my VERY large organization. Wonder what I'll find next...
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David said 1:31AM on 10-03-2005
The update has also affected the color bullets in my project cnter. They no longer exist in any display. Quite a disappointment. Hope this is fixed.
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Kevin said 11:36PM on 10-09-2005
The color bullets are gone for me too. But there's still a space there, which makes me think that it's not the fact that it's no longer supported, but that someone goofed. If the intended to remove the feature, well, why is there still an indentation (the calendar looks like crap because nothing's lined up). Blecch...
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Beverly said 2:58PM on 10-10-2005
Well, I wonder how MacDoug (see #13 above) still has the bullets then. If it's just a quirky thing I wonder if reinstalling SP2 would fix it. I'm afraid to do that, however, for the fear that I'd lose something else! I also have the blank spaces reserved. Hopefully they'll put the color back in. Are you listening Microsoft Engineers? We want our color bullets for our Mail, Project Center and Calendar!!
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