Microsoft Office 2008 &amp; 2004 updated

The productivity suites for Mac from Microsoft, past and present, received a patch this week to resolve security issues and improve performance. While the 2004 version only got the security patches, the 2008 update, to version 12.2.3, boasts the following fixes to all apps in the suite:

Security is improved. This update fixes vulnerabilities in Office 2008 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information, see the security bulletin that is listed earlier in this document.
Stability is improved. This update fixes an issue that causes Office 2008 applications to close unexpectedly when you open or use Office 2008 applications.
Windows Office documents to which metafiles are attached now contain the correct text spacing when they are opened in Office 2008 for Mac. This update fixes text spacing issues that occur when you use Office 2008 for Mac to open a Windows Office document to which an OLE object or a metafile is attached.

There are also specific tweaks to the individual suite apps, and a passel of bug fixes for the (relatively) new Microsoft Document Connection for Mac utility. The 350MB updater requires Office 12.1.0 or later and Mac OS X 10.4.9.

While my experience is probably idiosyncratic, I did have a rather nasty sequence of events after updating my home machine to the new Office version: my Entourage database went belly-up and had to be rebuilt. Once the rebuild was done and Entourage was relaunched, more badness ensued; due to a yet-to-be-isolated issue, all of the mail, contacts and calendar entries in my connected Exchange 2003 account went poof and had to be restored from a backup. Not my best day ever.

I'm inclined to believe that this snafu was specific to my bloated database file and my Exchange config, and not something likely to hit most users... nevertheless, you might consider backing up your Office 2008 Identities folder (which contains your Entourage mail & PIM data) prior to the update.

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Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976828

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The productivity suites for Mac from Microsoft, past and present, received a patch this week to resolve security issues and improve...

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Kei

I wish they would frickin' give us Arabic support. Why is it that only Windows has it and OSX doesnt.....

November 13 2009 at 4:30 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark Stanley

The Entourage database corruption issue doesn't require the latest Office 2008 to happen. I've been using Entourage since 2008 came out and it regularly crashes requiring a database rebuild, and sometimes that rebuild fails to work. Entourage and Office for Mac in general is a POS. Unfortunately the Office apps are generally a requirement in a corporate environment, but thankfully Mac OSX 10.5.6 Snow Leopard now means that Entourage can be replaced with the Apple Mail client which in the few months since Snow Leopard has been released, has proven to be much more reliable and usable than Entourage. For those on Snow Leopard I would recommend leaving Entourage behind in favour of Mail.

November 13 2009 at 3:59 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cormac

Every single update to MS office 2008 has included the fix for the security threat of "hackers being able to overwrite the contents of your memory with malicious code." either microsoft really sucks at fixing it or they're just lying to make you update.

November 13 2009 at 2:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

brendan

I updated and now Word crashes every five minutes. 350 MB for this. I suspect they did this on purpose now that Apple is is really giving them a run for their money.

November 13 2009 at 12:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I cannot install either by the update or by downloading the installer. Shown here http://twitpic.com/p67bv

November 12 2009 at 7:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jennyp

I read somewhere that Office 2008 runs OK in SL but very slowly. Has this fixed it?

November 12 2009 at 5:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris

Still no fix for the Spaces issue...very irritating.

November 12 2009 at 3:43 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to Chris's comment

Izzy

My Entourage crashes about every 30 minutes after the update.

November 12 2009 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

rNOT

No problems with 2008.

November 12 2009 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Matt

The update went on OK, and my Entourage database is still intact, but the "passel of bug fixes for the (relatively) new Microsoft Document Connection for Mac utility" didn't fix it. It still doesn't work at all for me. It crashes whenever I try to open an Sharepoint connection

November 12 2009 at 3:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply