Office 2007 SP2: Should You Even Bother?

Microsoft, with very little ballyhoo, released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 earlier this week. This latest bundle of security patches, upgrades and enhancements comes on the immediate heels of the end of free support life-cycle for its predecessor, Office 2003.

SP2 has some key features; most notably, the ability to save files as PDFs (portable document format) natively, as well as the ability to open and save Open Document Format (ODF) files. This will allow Word users to better share files created with the popular (and free) Open Office suite from Sun Microsystems. (note: I have been opening Word docs in Open Office for several years). Other key enhancements include improvements to Excel's charting functionality and the addition of a chart object model to Word and to PowerPoint. Perhaps the most appreciated enhancement will be the improvements to Outlook. Notorious for slow start-ups and sometimes sluggish performance, the EMail/PIM app should now start faster, shutdown with fewer errors and provide improvements in the "underlying data structures and the general reliability of calendar updates".

You read a detailed list of all that SP2 contains by visiting: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953195