SP2 is Here - Office 2007 SP2 Released

SP2 is here. At the end of April 2009, Microsoft released Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2). The service pack contained numerous changes for the Office suite, in particular for Outlook 2007. I've been working with the service pack for the last several days and have this quick report on the Outlook side of it.

This update will be installed for you automatically by Office Update, or you can go download it now at:

Office 2007 SP2

There are tons of changes to Outlook, focused primarily on improving performance and making the calendar more reliable. Microsoft claims that the changes in the service pack make Outlook faster to start up, faster to use, consistently able to shut down, and generally better all around.

The calendar improvements are aimed at the enterprise, meaning that synchronizing, sharing, and updating calendars at the office should work better.

NOTE: For more details on the Outlook changes in the service pack, go to:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968774/

My Impressions of SP2

There are two things you should know, however. First, this update may break some of your Outlook add-ins. One of my test machines uses the AVG anti-virus program. After I installed the service pack, the AVG add-in that checks email messages for viruses no longer worked. I expect this problem will be fixed by AVG soon, but it is something to be aware of.

Also, the first time you start Outlook after installing the service pack, you will likely notice a significant delay. The service pack makes lots of changes to Outlook, and it takes some time to get them all done. So don't panic if Outlook doesn't start working normally for several minutes after you do the update.

I'll post more if anything else important comes up, but all in all, this seems to be a well-done update that will improve your Outlook experience.

Go to the Outlook Updates page

Go to the Free Stuff page