Microsoft Issues Office 2008, Office 2004, Open XML Converter Updates

Microsoft today issued a handful of updates for users of the company's Office productivity suite. While much of the documentation for these releases mysteriously lists October release dates, the updates do appear to have just been issued today.

- Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.3 Update (349.5 MB): According to the associated support document, the update includes suite-wide security and stability updates, as well as a number of specific fixes for issues in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, and Document Connection for Mac.

- Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.6 Update (16.6 MB): Microsoft's notes on the update suggest that the primary focus of the small update is on security fixes, primarily flaws in Word and Excel also addressed in the Office 2008 update that could result in remote code execution.

Security is improved for all Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac applications. The Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.6 Update fixes vulnerabilities in Office 2004 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. For more information, see the security bulletins that are listed earlier in this document.

- Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.1.3 (45.1 MB): An update to Microsoft's tool that allows documents saved in the new Office 2007/2008 formats to be opened on earlier versions of Office, the support document associated with the update does not appear to specify the exact changes included in this new version of the converter software.

- Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition (64.4 MB): The update to Microsoft's tools allowing users to communicate with Exchange Server brings several new features to calendaring, synchronization, and logging.