Office 2007 SP2 to be Released in Feb-April Next Year, Initial Details Emerge

The Microsoft Office Persistent Service team announced that they will soon release the second Service Pack for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, but the exact date has not been determined yet. It is preliminarily expected to be between **February and April 2009**.

Historically, Microsoft rarely announces specific details about Office SPs in advance. For example, the updates included in Office 2003 SP3 and Office 2007 SP1 were only revealed just before or after their releases. This time, Microsoft has decided to increase transparency and share some preliminary details of Office 2007 SP2 with users early on. Of course, it is not possible to include all the update content at this stage, so this is just an initial overview.

In fact, Microsoft has already guaranteed that **Office 2007 SP2 will integrate support for file formats such as ODF, XPS, and PDF**, allowing documents to be saved in these formats without additional plugins. Actually, Microsoft had planned to directly support PDF during the development of Office 2007, but abandoned the plan due to Adobe's opposition. It seems that both parties have now communicated well again.

Other desktop-related updates in Office 2007 SP2 include:

**1. Improved performance of Outlook**

**2. Enhanced stability of Outlook calendar functions**

**3. Support for object model (Object Model) in Word and PowerPoint charts**

**4. Support for all encryption algorithms provided by the operating system to improve encryption functionality**

**5. Enhanced functionality for creating charts in Excel**

**6. Ability to ungroup SmartArt images, enabling the addition of animation effects in PowerPoint**

**7. Provision of an Office SP uninstallation tool**

Microsoft will soon invite some enterprise customers to participate in the SP2 Beta testing project. The relevant blogs for each component of Office will also gradually announce more new content about SP2. Those interested can follow the links below:

[Access Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/access/)

[Daniel Escapa’s Blog (OneNote)](http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/)

[InfoPath Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/)

[John Guin’s Blog (OneNote)](http://blogs.msdn.com/johnguin/)

[Excel Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/)

[Project Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/project)

[Outlook Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook)

[PowerPoint Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/powerpoint/)

[SharePoint Designer Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner)

[SharePoint Designer Support Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/spdsupport)

[Windows SharePoint Services Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/)

[Word Team Blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/)

DriverHome