Microsoft To Launch Office 2007 SP1 Next Week

Last month at its TechEd event in Spain, Microsoft said it was on track to launch Office 2007 service pack 1 in early 2008. But Tuesday, Microsoft said the launch of SP1 -- which improves the stability, performance, and security of Office 2007 -- has been moved up to next week.

Microsoft on Dec. 11 plans to make Office 2007 SP1 available for download, according to a Tuesday post to Microsoft's Upstate New York Technology Team Weblog by John Rajunas, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based account technology specialist with Microsoft.

Office 2007 SP1 reflects the "unceasing efforts" on Microsoft's part to listen to customer feedback and target key issues that users have reported having with the software, wrote Rajunas.

"It will eliminate many deployment barriers to deployment you may have in your environment, it will provide support for Windows Server 2008, and will provide critical fixes to products such as Project and Project Server," Rajunas wrote.

Microsoft also took into account users' concerns over Office 2007 SP1 being pushed out through its Automatic Update mechanism, and won't immediately release it this way, Rajunas wrote.

The Office team will instead offer users a timeframe for releasing SP1 through Automatic Update to give them a chance to figure out how it will play in their environments prior to deployment.

Microsoft in June stopped shipping Office 2003, which is no longer available except through volume licensing. But many organizations are staying with Office 2003 because they don't like the changes Microsoft made to the user interface in Office 2007, according to solution providers and analysts.