Filed under: Software
Microsoft updates Office 2008, Office 2004
Today, Microsoft released updates for both Office 2008 for Mac, and Office 2004. These two updates fix several vulnerabilities within Office and add improvements.
Microsoft Office 2008 Update 12.1.5
This update contains several improvements to enhance stability, compatibility, and performance. In addition, this update includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information about this update, please visit the Microsoft Web site.
This update weighs in at 104 MB and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Office 2008 update website, or through Automatic Update (by choosing Help > Check for Updates from any Office application).
Microsoft Office 2004 Update 11.5.3
This update contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance. In addition, this update includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information about this update, please visit the Microsoft Web site.
This update is 15MBs, and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Office 2004 update website, or through Microsoft Automatic Update.
Update: Release notes for the Office 2008 12.1.5 update have now been posted. You can find them here.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kevin said 4:18PM on 12-09-2008
I hope this fixes the fact that Office can't seem to play right w/ Spaces
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erik said 4:43PM on 12-09-2008
The issues with Spaces is an Apple problem. Please read http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/10/23/risks-and-rewards/ for more details.
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
Alex said 5:41PM on 12-09-2008
Schwieb:
In my opinion, the Spaces "bug" makes the MS Office suite practically unusable. I stick with Word and Excel, begrudgingly, because they offer functionality that cannot be had in OpenOffice or iWork, but I can assure you that using the two products is a truly, truly infuriating experience of it.
There is no other application on my system that behaves this way with Spaces. To explain this problem by saying, "it's Apple's fault" is too dismissive, and frankly, a little lame. Especially considering how the bug cripples the usefulness of the product, and how you've had over a year to fix it.
Your blog post was informative, and I appreciated the explanation. But the problem still stands. Changing the formatting palette will require extensive rewrites of the code? Then do it. Your customers demand a product that works.
macbwizard said 6:06PM on 12-09-2008
Schwieb:
Even if your code is technically written according to spec, it obviously doesn't work. How about instead of complaining about Apple, why not try reworking the code so it does do what it is supposed to do?
krump said 7:26PM on 12-09-2008
Alex: "Your customers demand a product that works." That is true, on the Apple side, and this is an acceptable response for us. However, this is Microshaft... if a product doesn't work they just spend more money advertising it and "halo polishing" the positive sides of the product so the negative items dull into the darkness.
Michael Rose said 5:11PM on 12-09-2008
It won't. The Spaces issue is due to a conflict between the (legitimate but uncommon) way Office sets up the Toolbox window and the way that Apple uses Core Graphics to trigger Spaces. The fix either depends on Apple correctly supporting the drawing approach of Office, or Office reworking a large amount of windowing code.
See http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/10/23/risks-and-rewards/ for detail.
Reply
2shae said 5:24PM on 12-09-2008
Wow!
MS Word starts up way faster now....actually it seems to be a whole lot faster overall.
Btw, after a reinstall of MS Office 2008, I have a weird problem of Word not showing an example of the fonts from the drop down menu (if that makes any sense)
example: http://img116.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1gv6.png
Does anyone know how to fix this??
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Krump said 7:26PM on 12-09-2008
Glad to hear the update allows it to start up faster, that is one of my largest issues. My second is the size of the updates! I have more hd space dedicated to office then any other program. I guess they are still paying the programmers by the line of code!
Frank said 3:34PM on 12-10-2008
Hey 2shae,
I believe all you need to do is go to Word | Preferences... | General tab, and make sure
[x] WYSIWYG font and style menus
is checked, then restart Word. 'course, this might explain part of the reason Word seems quicker, too, as rendering all those fonts is bound to slow it down a bit.
2shae said 3:43PM on 12-10-2008
Thanks Frank!
And yeah the WYSIWYG function apparently does make a noticeable difference in speed.
To bad I can't really live without that function.
Still, the update does improve speed....start up of Word is way faster for me.
losty. said 5:35PM on 12-09-2008
Not sure why but AutoUpdate isn't picking this up for Office 2004 on 10.5.5. I'm in the UK, could that have anything to do with it?
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Nadyne Mielke said 1:14PM on 12-12-2008
It sometimes takes a bit of extra time for the update to populate through all of our servers. You can download it directly from Mactopia if you don't want to wait for it to show up in AutoUpdate.
Dave said 9:36PM on 12-09-2008
Is there no way to just shut down the 'toolbox'/formatting palette off completely and work strictly from toolbars at the top of the document window? Or did I completely misunderstand the blog explanation? I'd gladly work through the main window/menus rather than have to deal with the horrific spaces bug. It drives me crazy.
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Dave said 9:38PM on 12-09-2008
Just to clarify... I realize I can close the toolbox window. But I'm talking about completely disabling the feature as a workaround and accessing the formatting features via menus/regular toolbar (I don't need any other tools from the toolbox in my work).
gear said 5:25AM on 12-10-2008
IF it wasn't for TUAW, I would never get an update for MS Office. The auto update doesn't work. In fact when TUAW informs me there is a new update the auto update doesn't work when I manually try to use it to search for (and load) the update. I have followed TUAW's links to and downloaded each update myself.
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Bryan said 4:42PM on 12-11-2008
I second that - I just ran Auto Update and it didn't find the update. I too had to go to the M$ website to download the update manually & install it. Kinda defeats the purpose of the "Auto" update.