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Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.5 and 2004 11.5.3 Updates

Microsoft has once again updated Office 2008 and 2004, this time fixing two notable security issues, improving general stability, and addressing a number of bugs. It’s nice to see both continued support for Office 2004, and continued attention to providing detailed release notes.

According to Microsoft’s Web site each 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.”

Office 2008 Changes — In addition to the security patches for Word and Excel, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.5 Update includes a fix for a bug that could cause Office applications to crash unexpectedly, and improves typing performance in Excel and PowerPoint when working with recently used files from a shared folder on a virtual machine.

In Excel 2008, calculation reliability has been improved with a number of minor function issues being resolved. Also improved is support for pasting pictures from Excel worksheets to PowerPoint and Word documents. Finally, two bugs that were causing Excel to crash have been fixed. One would cause crashes when sorting items in PivotTable reports; the other could cause a crash when deleting rows or columns from workbooks that contain array-entered formulas.

Word 2008 sees only one very specific update, which fixes an issue that causes formatting problems when you save a Word document in the Word 97-2004 format and then reopen it in Word 2003 for Windows.

Finally, Entourage 2008 receives updated time zone information. PowerPoint 2008 received no updates.

The Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.5 Update requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, and that you have already installed previous updates. It’s a 103.6 MB download and is available from Microsoft’s Web site or via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility launched by choosing Check for Updates from any Office 2008 application.

Office 2004 Changes — The same security risks addressed by the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.5 Update are also dealt with by the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.3 Update. Additionally, this small update fixes crashing bugs in Excel 2004 and Word 2004 when you open or close documents, and updates time zone information in Entourage 2004.

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.3 Update requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later, and that you’ve previously installed the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.2 Update. It’s a 15.1 MB download from Microsoft’s Web site, and should soon be available via the Office 2004 version of Microsoft AutoUpdate.

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