Office 2007 creeps toward release
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp.'s Office 2007 suite is nearing the end of its long testing process. Microsoft on Thursday will offer a refresh of beta 2, the last external test release of the product before it is released to manufacturing, the company said. Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh will feature improved performance, enhancements to its collaboration tools and tighter integration across the individual products, Microsoft said. It also will include improvements in the general look and feel of the suite. Users canÂ download the beta 2 refresh of Office 2007 for free. Beta 2 of Office 2007 was originally released in late May. In the first two months of its public release, it was downloaded more than 3 million times by beta testers, so Microsoft began charging users US$1.50 to download the release at the end of July. The company beganÂ allowing users to test Office online with a Web-based test version of the suite in June. Like its sister product Windows Vista, Office 2007 has been delayed several times, but the company's latest target for release is to have it in the hands of business customers before the end of the year and consumers in the first quarter of 2007. However, online retailerÂ Amazon.com Inc. is already taking orders for Office 2007, and lists the product's ship date as Jan. 30, 2007. Vista, the next major update to Microsoft's Windows client OS, is also expected to be in general release at the same time, and will get to business customers in November, according to its current schedule. Office 2007 features a new user interface and a host of enhancements to its applications that allow users to work together in a collaborative environment.
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Office, Microsoft Corp.&#39;s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself.
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O is planning to  release a new version of its Office program for small  businesses that handles accounting and customer management  tasks, the world's largest software maker said on Friday.
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Microsoft is releasing its Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, and Office Live Meeting on October 16.
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Microsoft outlined a new feature that will be included in Office 2008 for Mac.
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Office 2007 or bust Microsoft is making Office 2007 its default productivity suite for system builders, less than five months after the suite's full-scale launch.â¦
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Hard-boiled suites Microsoft is throwing developers working with mixed PC and Mac environments a curveball with the long-awaited release of Office for Macintosh 2008.â¦
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Microsoft's Office suite continues to be a cash cow for the company, even as interest in its Vista operating system may be lagging, according to market research from NPD Group.
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StarOffice plug-in for Office 2003 translates Word and ODF Writer files; spreadsheet, presentation translators set for April.
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Microsoft is winding down the beta program for Office 2007 as it prepares for a release to manufacturing before the end of the month. On October 25, Microsoft will close its Office Preview site and stop allowing downloads of the beta.
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The service pack for the newest Microsoft operating system is out and about, though not officially.
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Microsoft Corp  said on Tuesday  that it released the first major update of its Office 2007  productivity software at least one month ahead of its projected  target.
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Some users are getting the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically -- even though Microsoft said it would not use Windows' Automatic Updates to push out the  upgrade for months.
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Some users have gotten the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically, even though Microsoft said it would not use Windows' AU (Automatic Updates) to push out the large upgrade for several months, the company confirmed Thursday.Anyone running a preview copy of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which was made available to all comers only Wednesday, will receive the Office 2007 upgrade automatically. Users of other in-beta Microsoft products, including Windows XP SP3, which is still in limited testing, will also be hit by the Office update, which weighs in at almost 220MB."As noted to beta customers, if [they] are running Vista SP1 beta software, as part of the beta program, Office 2007 SP1 on pre-release Windows Vista SP1 will automatically install as planned for this beta program," said Bobbie Harder, a senior program manager with the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) group.Others, including Susan Bradley, a writer for the WindowsSecrets newsletter, noticed the automatic download and install of Office 2007 SP1. "I woke up on Wednesday morning to find a notification that a Vista machine had rebooted after being patched," Bradley said in Thursday's issue of the newsletter. "I found, to my surprise, that the new Service Pack 1 for Office 2007, which was released on Tuesday, had been auto-installed."Bradley also said that even if users of Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, or WSUS 3.0 SP3 manually installed Office 2007 SP1, AU later automatically installs -- actually re-installs -- the service pack.Earlier this week, when Microsoft unveiled the service pack, it said AU would not be used to deliver SP1 for at least three months and maybe as many as six months. In any case, it promised to give users 30 days' notice before it pushed it out using AU.While technically true -- Office 2007 SP1 is only shoved to users running a preview OS -- some Vista users have been confused by the appearance of the service pack in their Windows Update listings this week as they downloaded and applied numerous security patches.Harder explained what Vista users experience in a blog post Thursday. "On Vista in the Windows Update Control Panel Applet, the Office 2007 SP1 will appear as an available update to download and install, but it will not automatically download and install, regardless of the automatic settings," she said.That's true, countered Bradley, but because the service pack shows on the list and is checked by default, it's easy for users to overlook it, then get slammed with the massive download. "If you are a bit asleep and just blindly approve all of the patches, you get a very large wait while SP1 for Office 2007 is downloaded," she said.A Computerworld reader reported exactly that. "I received [Office 2007 SP1] last night Dec 11 as part of Windows Auto-update," said someone identified as 6monthVistaUser in a comment attached to a story about SP1. "Last night was the largest auto-update ever (230 MB download) filled with 11 updates. 1 was for IE v7, 6 were for Vista cumulative patches, 1 was the Office 2007 Service Pack 1, the other one was for Business Contacts Manager SP 1."Harder defended the process. "For customers who want the benefits of Office 2007 SP1 now, we have made it available," she said. She also noted that users could choose not to pull in the service pack. "Download and installation of the Office 2007 SP1 via the Vista Windows Update control panel applet requires explicit user interaction, just as with the Microsoft Update site," she said. "Once the list of available updates appears, they can de-select or uncheck the box next to Office 2007 SP1 and choose to download and install other updates, or just close the applet."The next time Windows Update runs, however, Office 2007 SP1 reappears, again checked by default. To strike it off the list, users must right-click the item in the list and choose "hide update."
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Microsoft Corp.  said on  Thursday that more than 200 million users will be using one of  its new products -- including its highly-anticipated Windows  Vista operating system, Office 2007 software suite and Exchange  server -- by the end of 2007.
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Microsoft on Thursday will release a Technical Refresh build of Office 2007 Beta 2, which originally debuted to the public in late May. The update brings to the table a number of performance and reliability improvements in all Office applications.
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Blog: Software maker says it's ready with a near-final "release candidate" version, which will find its way on to servers later this year.