Office 2008 users: 12.2.7 update is available

DO NOT DO THIS UPDATE!!! Since installing this update, Entourage and Word now crash on me 5-8 times a day. Before installing, they worked fine. I have a co-worker who installed the update as well, her system is doing the same thing. Now I either have to reinstall and not do the update or wait until our IT department has a build for Office 2011:(

Having a lot of problems with Excel since the update. Not sure if related to the update or not, but most PC originated XLSX files fail for me now. It either says the file is corrupted or simply fails silently and stops loading the file in about half way through to loading.

If I only use Microsoft Word and Powerpoint is it really necessary for me to do this update? Am I at risk for any security issues (overwriting the memory with
malicious codes etc.) if I don't?

Office 2004 Users: There's an update for you, too. Only 191 MB.

excel has crashed since i first installed it. pure ... C*R*A*P.
i have lost so many hours of work due to excel. Hopefully it is finally ready for prime time. Funny they fix this two weeks before the new one comes out

There was also an OpenXML converter update which I did install.

Here are the Mysterious Microsoft Programming Questions:
Why does the installer require you to quit Safari?
And why does it need to quit Entourage?
And why do I have to manually quit Microsoft AutoUpdate before the installer can continue with the installation? Shouldn't it know how to that itself by now?

That's not Entourage's fault, it was the Open XML converter, a totally separate program. Stoopid MS programmers...

I am really glad I read the comments before running the update. I appreciate the feedback, which would be impossible to find on Microsoft's "official" support pages.

I love Entourage. There, I said it. One app, three functions. With a keystroke, I can switch between mail, calendar and address book. It syncs with the university's Exchange servers with a university wide address book.

And I've been using it since 2004.

So there.

Entourage is a great program for connecting to the exchange servers in our district. All the teachers with Macs use it and I personally feel that it is way more reliable and less prone to dropping connection to the server than outlook 2007 on our windows machines.

Ran the 12.2.7 update yesterday. All seemingly went well, but we are seeing an identical problem with Entourage on the two Macs we updated (new MacBook Pro and an old PPC QuickSilver).

We have the Entourage prefs set to NOT auto show images in emails unless the sender is in the address book. Normally, when one receives a non-address book email the "header" of the email will have a "Click here to download images" area. Unless you click that message, no images will be shown. After the 12.2.7 update, either the clickable message is totally gone, or is tremendously slow to appear. So far, about 80% of the time there is no way to show images.

We will probably have to set the prefs to "Show images always" rather than the far more secure method we had been using. I consider this a security issue of great importance, so I hope there is a resolution quickly from Microsoft.

So here's a question: does each update really take up that much space? 'Cause it seems like each Office update is about that big, and there've been a decent amount of them, so I'm starting to wonder if the program is taking up my whole HD. Finder claims my whole Office 2008 folder is 1GB, but the updates I've applied so far would add up to way more than that.