Microsoft is gearing up to release the second service pack for the Office 2007 System. In this regard, the Redmond company announced that it planned to start serving Office 2007 Service Pack 2 to business customers via Windows Server Update Services by the end of this month. Even at this point in time Microsoft has yet to indicate the deadline for the availability of Office 2007 SP2. However, the fact that the 2007 Office System SP2 is coming to WSUS in April means that the service pack will also be offered to end users by the end of this month.
Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Office System will be made available to Windows Server Update Services in April, classified as a service pack,” explained Cecilia Cole, WSUS program manager. Microsoft has managed to keep mum on the development process of Office 2007 SP2. In fact, the news of Office 2007 SP 2's availability comes from a member of the WSUS team, and not from the people building the productivity suite.
Traditionally, the Redmond company first releases updates, including major refreshes such as service packs, via the Microsoft Download Center first. Only after service packs are available for download does the software giant turn to distribution over Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Automatic Updates and WSUS. In this regard, users of Office 2007 should expect SP2 to also be up for grabs as a standalone download by the end of this month.
“Service Pack 2 includes some significant work, including: built-in ability to save as ODF & PDF formats, improvements to Outlook’s performance and calendar reliability, significant bug fixes for charts in core Office applications, the ability for client service packs to be removed using an uninstall tool, and a host of customer-requested improvements to the Office Server products,” Cole added. “It is also a rollup of all fixes that have previously been released for Office 2007 products.”
Cole promised that later this month, the Office Sustaining Engineering team will provide additional details related to the availability of Office 2007 SP2. At the start of this month Office 2007 SP2 Build 12.0.6416.1000 was leaked in the wild and made available for download via torrent trackers.
