Security issues, bugs addressed in latest update

Microsoft has updated its flagship Mac product, Microsoft Office for Mac in both the 2011 and 2008 editions, along with a separate update for Entourage Web Services for Office 2008. The updates fix critical security issues and also help improve overall security, including "fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code," according to the release notes. In addition, the 2011 Office update delivers several bug fixes, and the Entourage update now syncs information with Exchange Server.

The Office 2011 update, which brings the suite up to version 14.3.2, requires OS X 10.5.8 or later and users must have already installed the Office 14.3.1 update. Microsoft's AutoUpdate program can be used to bring older versions of Office 2011 up to speed. In addition to security fixes, the update solves an issue where contacts that were created in the x500 format did not work in Outlook, the BCC recipient was missing on GMail IMAP draft messages, and a bug that flagged some contractions as spelling errors.

In addition, shared folders couldn't open mailboxes that used the Kerberos protocol in Outlook, and Coordinated Universal Time wasn't included when users created calendar events. Both issues are now fixed. Other problems included an issue where the Offline Address Book wasn't updated correctly for certain Office 365 users, a VBA bug that didn't wait for a user's action in a "Save As" dialog box before moving on, a crash problem when scrolling while Track Changes default settings were enabled in large documents, and a graphics issue with some transitions in PowerPoint.

The update for the 2008 edition of Office only includes the security fixes shared with the 2011 update. It updates the 2008 edition to version 12.3.6, and requires OS X 10.4.9 or later and for Service Pack 2 to already be installed. The Entourage Web Services update results in version 13.1.6, and adds Exchange Server synchronizing along with calendaring improvements and a new ability to enable logging, which can be used for diagnostic purposes.

Before the Entourage update can be installed, users must have already updated their Office 2008 to version 12.3.6 as shown above. The Microsoft Exchange Server should be running the 2007 Service Pack 1 with Update Rollup 4 or later. The updates will appear in Office AutoUpdate for the appropriate versions and machines.

by MacNN Staff