Filed under: Software
Microsoft Office rolls up to 12.1.7, trial edition downloadable
There's an update in town, and it's all about locking it down: the 12.1.7 update to Microsoft Office 2008 (available within the suite via the software update tool, or downloadable from Microsoft) closes two security holes present in multiple versions of Microsoft Excel and first acknowledged by the company in February. These vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to create a specially-configured Excel file that, when opened, would allow full control of the target machine.
The update package also bundles up all the previous patches to Office 2008, which lends it heft (it weighs in at over 150 MB) but simplifies matters if you're a few revs behind. Note that there is no 12.1.6 update in the sequence; the previous patch level was 12.1.5.
If you haven't made the leap to Office 2008 yet (perhaps you're on a PPC Mac; perhaps you feel that you get better interoperability with Office 2003 users on Windows; perhaps you have to have Visual Basic support for macros), Microsoft is giving you the chance to consider moving up with a full-featured 30-day demo of Office 2008, now available for download in the USA. The package includes all the Office apps and can be upgraded to a paid license in the field without purchasing a boxed copy and reinstalling. Upgrades from previous editions of Office start at $240... of course, there are some less expensive alternatives out there.
[h/t Ars Technica]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David Emery said 1:00PM on 4-15-2009
Installing this 'out of the box' so-to-speak, broke my copy of Office 2008 (apparently some library missing or incompatible.) Word/PowerPoint/Excel would crash immediately upon launch
What I did to fix this was
a. Uninstall Office (using their uninstaller tool)
b. (This is the key step) cd /library/receipts; sudo rm -rf Office2008*
c. reinstall from CD
d. Then let Microsoft Update run normally.
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David Pelton said 5:03PM on 4-22-2009
David, could you please give some more details to your issue?
You state you got something akin to "apparently some library missing or incompatible". Might your error have been something like: "Symbol not found: _McpFIsTryAndBuy (MicrosoftComponentPlugin.framework) needed by Microsoft Word.app"
I have been seeing a very few reports of this, and I would like to track it down.
Are you using the Trial version that is downloadable? Would you be willing to send me a file or work offline (outside this forum) to track down the issue, and then we can report back to everyone what we found?
Thanks
David Pelton
Microsoft, MacBU
Justin said 10:23AM on 4-15-2009
Does anyone know if they've fixed the problem that causes Office 2008 to behave oddly with Spaces?
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Tom said 10:21AM on 4-15-2009
behave oddly? You mean 'being completely useless when spaces is turned on'...
Michael Rose said 10:21AM on 4-15-2009
Since it's not an announced change, I would think probably not. The Spaces issue is a pretty big engineering challenge, as noted here:
http://www.schwieb.com/blog/2008/10/23/risks-and-rewards/
http://tr.im/iSyP
Ryan Trevisol said 11:25AM on 4-15-2009
Am I the only one who finds spaces to be useless because it switches me to Finder every time I switch to an empty space?
Joe said 10:33AM on 4-15-2009
FYI, the update didn't show up via the Mac software update tool when I used that (the iMovie update did, though). I actually had to launch Office 2008 and use the update menu item there.
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TrafficGuy said 10:44AM on 4-15-2009
@Joe
You're not going to find updates non-Apple software in Apple's Software Update application.
Dan said 10:42AM on 4-15-2009
sorry for this off-topic question...
What program or mod are you using to get that yellow selection bar?
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Michael Rose said 11:02AM on 4-15-2009
Um... System Preferences --> Appearance --> Highlight Color. In this case, Gold.
Dan said 11:07AM on 4-15-2009
@Michael Rose
thanks. It says "For selected text" which led me to believe it was only text that was highlighted with the cursor >.
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kanebake said 11:29AM on 4-15-2009
I gave up on spaces. Love the idea but it screws up too many applications.
Photoshop, Final Cut sometimes looses windows to random spaces. The feature is pretty broken for now.
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Arnoz said 3:57PM on 4-15-2009
Finally an Office update that doesn't need a restart, doesn't reindex Spotlight or installs even if you used Monolingual or such tools to remove languages!
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Jeff said 11:57PM on 4-18-2009
> If you haven't made the leap to Office 2008 yet (perhaps you're on a PPC Mac;...)
Well, don't mention this to my PPC Mac. MSO 2008 works fine on it.
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puhsitch said 10:35PM on 4-15-2009
It's been shown to be slower than Office 2004 on PPC Macs, though, so I imagine that many people would be a little hesitant to plop down the cash without trying it first.
Janelm said 8:13PM on 4-16-2009
David Emery, would you mind spelling out for those of us with less of a clue, how to do step b. of the process you outlined? Where do you enter this, exactly?
Thanks.
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Ian said 6:14PM on 4-16-2009
...but still comes with the same old problem:
"You cannot install Office 2008 12.1.7 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume."
Help!!!!!
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Jason Brown said 2:28PM on 4-17-2009
Greetings and Salutations
Some folks have mentioned that they have not been able to install the Office 12.1.7 update. I would like to remind folks of some of the caveats that apply to installing an Office update.
NAME
-----
The Apple Installer technology that we are using requires that the application and the folder they reside in maintain their original names. If you have renamed the applications or the folder they reside in, you'll need to revert it to the original names.
LOCATION
------------
While you drag Office anywhere after an install, the Apple Installer technology will not find a copy of Office that is not on a bootable partition. So if you have Office on a spare partition with no OS on it, you'll need to move it to a partition that has an OS on it.
LANGUAGE
-----------
The updater only works on the language it was intended for; therefore, if you installed Italian Office, the German updater will not work for it. Because we use Apple's Installer the UI will match the UI of your OS so judging which updater you got by the UI of the Installer will not work.
MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
------------------------------------
If you have multiple language versions of Office on your machine, then you'll want to put the one you wish to update in your Application folder; update it; then either rename it or move it out and put the next language in the Application folder.
The Installer will search for Office, and if the first one it finds is a different language than the updater it will not keep searching for copies with the matching language.
RESTARTING YOUR MACHINE
------------------------------------
In some instances, the temporary folder used to install the last update does not get deleted. In these instances, the next Office update cannot install – you can rectify this by restarting your machine.
Please also see the Knowledge Base Article we have at
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/help.mspx?MODE=ct&CTT=PageView&clr=99-1-0&target=bee52d73-be77-4544-a5cd-402d9b56b9f41033&srcid=&ep=8&rtype=2&pos=3&quid=dc327dd2-3f60-405a-9477-b711c349ac53
for more information.
I hope this covers most everyone's issues, and if not we are watching this forum, so please describe your situation and we will do our best to help you with INSTALLATION issues.
Jason Brown
Microsoft MacBU
Jeff said 12:00AM on 4-19-2009
Well, I had Office 2004 prior to getting a great deal from MS for Office 2008 through the company I work for (legal copy for $25!). While loading does seem a bit slower (again, I have a PPC, not an Intel) than Office 2004, once loaded, all is as zippy as ever. I can put up with another 10 seconds to load.
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Matej said 8:53AM on 5-08-2009
Well,
After upgrade to 12.1.7 PowePoint, Word, Excell started to crash. I did call Microsoft support and only advice I got was to completely remove Office and reinstall from the beginning....
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