Filed under: Software
Microsoft Office updated to 12.1.3
It got a bit lost in the hustle and bustle of yesterday's announcements, but there was an update released for Microsoft Office 2008; the 12.1.3 update, weighing in at 154 MB, provides the usual slew of security fixes and bug repairs that you know and love. Some crashing bugs have been squashed (including one that affected documents with embedded PDF images that I've seen once or twice), chart performance is improved across the entire suite, PowerPoint gets a fix to address file timestamp issues, and Excel comes in with multiple fixes for file saving and corruption problems.
You can download the DMG of the update directly from Microsoft, or run an Auto Update pass in your Office application of choice. If you encounter update issues or problems after the patches are run, please advise (and, more importantly, let Microsoft know). The best way to get improvements in Mac Office, when there are definitely some management attitudes that need adjustment, is to make your needs clear.
Update: Many Exchange 2003 users who have updated to 12.1.3 (including yours truly) have discovered an unfortunate issue in the new build: attempting to send or respond to meeting invitations results in an error. Whoops. Alternatives include using OWA (or your iPhone!) to respond to invites until this gets cleared, but it's quite annoying.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chase said 10:59AM on 10-15-2008
Hm, that's interesting because it says my software is up to date even though I have 12.1.2
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welchb said 11:05AM on 10-15-2008
Same - I don't think I have had the microsoft update software work once on my office since I started using it 6-7 months ago.
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patrick said 11:15AM on 10-15-2008
Now if only they'd fix the import utility so Entourage would pull my Apple email into it without crashing...
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Rui Silva said 11:28AM on 10-15-2008
Get iWorks or OpenOffic.
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Mark Spurrier said 11:23AM on 10-15-2008
Same updating issue a TON of people are having. THE UPDATER DOES NOT WORK. It blows my mind that they have not put more energy in to fixing the updater so that it will work for people to receive a UPDATE?!?
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Matt said 11:25AM on 10-15-2008
Auto update did not work. Downloaded from the link you guys have. Thanks. Well it appears Entourap still has not fixed an MAJOR bug. It does not update unread count on IMAP folders. They broke it 2 updates ago during a "fix" to the unread count. A support email lasting 1 month finally confirmed it is a real bug and Microsoft rosponse is just wait for it to be fixed in an update. Well this is the second update since reported and not fixed. I mean that is a major issue. I have mail sorted on the server and had to go back to Mac Mail so I can see which folders have unread email. Microsoft this is why people moving away from your products. You only seem to have fixed issues in Entourage that effect Exchange. You don't play nice with others! What is there only one coder on Mac Office projects addressing REAL bugs?
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Tony D said 11:27AM on 10-15-2008
It hits the same error as all previous Office 2008 updates - it keeps saying it cannot find the software to update it. The Microsoft blog has several reports of this issue for the 12.1.3 update posted on it already. So here we go again for a several hour update (re-install Office 2008, then update to 12.1.3 and then recover everything downstream like iCal, MobileMe and iPhone sync).................
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dagamer34 said 11:32AM on 10-15-2008
When are they EVER going to fix the Spaces incompatability in Leopard? 10 months and STILL no fix. Absolutely intolerable!
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ainivolsord said 11:43AM on 10-15-2008
If this updater actually WORKS, that would be a welcome something.
I have to admit that I'm less thrilled about it now that OpenOffice 3 is out, though. I've been using OO on Wondoze and Linux machines for some time, and it's nice to finally run it native on my MBP. Micro$oft really needs to solve some of these nagging updater issues and other bugs, especially now that we have some choices.
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mr. anyonmous said 12:03PM on 10-15-2008
I hope to god this fixes the problems MS Office has with spaces. Where the pallete jumps to another space and then you have to do so funky stuff to get it back. Or where the window shrinks to a quarter of the size....
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Bado said 11:56AM on 10-15-2008
Be VERY careful with this update if you use Exchange.
My SysAdmin and I both installed this update yesterday and for both of us, it broke meeting invites and responses to invites.
When trying to send out meeting invites, the request wouldn't sent the email. It would get stuck in the outbox, and a generic error would come up (googling for the error came up with nothing useful other than to attempt to rebuild the database, which didn't work). When receiving an invite and hitting a response (Accept, Deny, or Tentative) it would do the same thing. Regular email was sending just fine, and all Exchange settings were still correct.
Our Admin even tried to HUP the exchange server just to clear processes and make sure nothing had cached.
Finally we both downgraded Entourage by grabbing it from the Office 2008 dir (in Applications) off of our back-up drives (yay Superduper!) and dropping it back in place on the main drive. Everything started working again, immediately.
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mike said 11:54AM on 10-16-2008
I am having the same problem with calendar invites. This is ridiculous.
George said 11:58AM on 10-15-2008
Office 2000 works great for me through CrossOver - Windows NOT required. Opening a printing a file is all I need it to do. I am so glad I don't have to use Office really for anything else.
When Microsoft readily admits that they don't support the Mac version as well as the PC version and yet it costs about the same - they are stealing your money.
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erik said 2:57PM on 10-15-2008
The Spaces issues are due to problems in the OS. See http://www.tinyurl.com/office2008spaces for a brief discussion of the issue.
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
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stephane said 7:18AM on 10-16-2008
Hummm I wonder how come all other applications that are multiple-window-based work fine on OS X...
Sounds like this is a "too hard of a bug" to fix. Mactopia is just pushing the burden onto someone else.
That bug has made it so I cannot use Office with my current setup. It's ridiculous...
We don't need yet another page that greatly explains the limitations and responsibilities of each parties, we just need Office to behave properly in space.
Jesse said 2:30PM on 10-15-2008
Office for the Mac sucks.
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Ket said 2:53PM on 10-15-2008
Expose still isn't perfect with Word windows.
Example, if you start with a first word window, switch to Safari, and then select a second word window in expose, it will actually bring the first word window back to the forefront instead of the selected second word window.
It's still broken, and a pain in the ass when i switch between multiple word windows and other applications all day long.
Here's hoping for a fix in the next helpful patch..
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Ket said 4:26PM on 10-15-2008
p.s. I do NOT have Spaces enabled.
JS said 4:15PM on 10-15-2008
Found this on the web for those having trouble with the "install not found" on HDD problem:
ERIC WOEHLER If you get the message that "No version of the software found on volume", due to having removed all the megabytes of language files etc, you can still get the installer to run.
1. Download the update from MS and save the updater on yr desktop - you will be modifying the file, so need to be able to edit and save it
2. Right click on the Updater and click "Show Package Contents".
3. Navigate to Contents -> Resources. You need to modify the script: package_updatable.
4. Remove these lines using Text Edit or BBEdit or similar:
if not found_valid_version:
sys.exit(48)
Save these changes to the Updater then close. Now it will update.
I had to open the .DMG and copy the file onto my HDD before I could show contents. Installed perfectly though. Enjoy
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Hazmat said 6:43AM on 10-16-2008
Cheers for that. Got the installer to run but then had Entourage crash on startup. Found it was calling the Japanese proofing tools scripts.
Went into MS Shared Applications\Proofing Tools and removed all the .proofingtool files for languages I'd previously removed, and all was well..:)