Microsoft has released the latest Service Pack for Office 2007. If you use Office 2007, be sure to update with Windows Updates or click here to download the stand alone installer.

of some big areas of improvement that are included in SP2.

Microsoft Office Access

• Lets you export reports to Microsoft Office Excel.
• Supports memo fields in the mailing label wizard for addresses.
• Fixes issues that occur in the import data wizards, in report printing and previewing, in macros, in Excel integration, and in date filters.
• Includes updates to Access Developer Extensions.

Microsoft Office Excel

• Improves the charting mechanism in Excel 2007. This includes better parity with Office 2003, improved robustness, and targeted performance improvements.
• Adds a chart object model to Word and to PowerPoint.
• Improves shapes that are surfaced in Excel. This includes better parity with Office 2003 and targeted performance improvements.
• Improves the method by which Excel prints graphical content, especially when it prints to PCL printers.
• Adds conversion rates to the Excel Euro Currency Tools add-in for the Maltese lira and for the Cypriot pound.

Microsoft Office Groove

• Improves Groove 2007 form tools. In particular, international users in certain locales will benefit from correct interpretation of spaces for digit grouping in currency values.
• Limits the number of file-sharing workspaces to 64 to make sure that all workspaces can be synchronized. This limit applies only to adding new file-sharing workspaces. If you already have more than 64 file-sharing workspaces, you can continue to use them.
• Optimizes synchronization reliability.

Microsoft Office InfoPath

• Fixes for overall security and stability in InfoPath 2007
• Provides improved compatibility between InfoPath forms and other Microsoft products, such as Groove and Outlook.

Microsoft Office OneNote

• Improves SharePoint sync functionality. This helps reduce the load on SharePoint servers, and it helps produce fewer sync errors.
• If the OneNote tray notification icon was previously dismissed, the icon will now appear in the notification area. Additionally, this icon can now be dismissed only in the Options dialog box in OneNote.
• Adds support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for the Japanese language.

Microsoft Office Outlook

• Performance improvements that apply to the following general responsiveness areas:
  • Startup
    Removes lengthy operations from initial startup.
  • Shutdown
    Makes Outlook exit predictably despite pending activities.
  • Folder View and Switch
    Improves view rendering and folder switching.
• Calendar improvements
  Improves underlying data structures and the general reliability of calendar updates.
• Data file checks
  Greatly reduces the number of scenarios in which you receive the following error message when you start Outlook:
• Improvements to Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
  There are now fewer duplicated items.
• Object Model improvements
  Now contains many customer-driven fixes.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint

• Improves the control of shape editing while you are zoomed in.
• Provides faster file resaves.
• Improves image quality after files are saved in the .jpeg, .png, and .gif formats.
• Provides better text representation when the representation is saved in earlier PowerPoint formats.
• Fixes several printer-specific problems.
• Provides better compatibility with Explorer preview in Windows Vista.
• Provides fuller integration of the Microsoft Office Excel Chart Object Model.

Microsoft Office Publisher

• Improves the printing of double-sided postcards and small booklets.
• Fixes issues in print preview, in HTML layout of grouped objects in Internet Explorer 8, in tab-stop, in e-mail, in content library, and in Design Checker.

Microsoft Office Word

• Improves the fidelity of .pdf and .xps output.
• Improves Outlook performance.
• Provides fuller integration of the Office Excel Chart Object Model.

Changes that affect multiple products

File formats

• OpenDocument Format (ODF) support
  
  
• Extensible File Formats: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now include a converter interface that lets you plug third-party custom file formats into these Office programs. A developer can create a converter for files of a particular extension. When this converter is installed on a user’s computer, the custom file format effectively behaves like a built-in file format. Specifically, users can open files of this format and save them by using the Open or Save UI. They can even set the custom format as their default file format. For more information, visit the following MSDN Web site:
  
  
• Built-in Save As PDF/XPS support
  PDF/XPS support is built into SP2 for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users no longer have to download the add-in separately.

Office graphics

• Improves application performance when many graphic objects are present, especially for Excel 2007.
• Fixes several issues that involve the object model. These fixes let you better achieve parity with Office 2003 when the object model works with graphical objects.
• Increases printing fidelity of graphical objects in many scenarios.
• A new XML-based representation of each SmartArt graphic in a document is saved with the file to optimize interoperability. This new feature uses the standard DrawingML markup to describe the visual properties of the SmartArt graphic.
• Improves the Edit Points feature. This enables more accurate shape editing and increased interoperability with Office 2003.

Office security

• Fixes certain scenarios in which documents in trusted locations were treated as non-trusted.
• Improves several cryptographic or encryption scenarios.
• Provides a method to ignore time stamping expiration.
• Provides better security warnings when a certificate is revoked.
• An updated password algorithm that is in sync with the document ISO requirements.
• Provides an ISO-OOXML-compliant password verifier for Excel, for PowerPoint, and for Word.
• Enables smarter AVAPI blocking for encrypted macros.

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