Microsoft issues XP bug killer

By Joe Wilcox

Microsoft plans to release its second collection of bug fixes to Office XP today.

Service Pack 2, a 15MB download, is supposed to enhance Office XP's performance, security and stability, while fixing a wide range of glitches, Microsoft said.

"This is a very comprehensive service pack," said Simon Marks, Office product manager.
The software giant issued the first Office XP service pack in December.

Like other updates, Office XP Service Pack 2 incorporates previously released patches and security fixes. On the security side, the update includes an April fix for an Outlook email bug and June patch protecting Word and Excel from malicious code embedded in macros.

Microsoft also included five separately released smaller fixes from April, May and June. One updates the Office XP spell checker, while others resolve bugs in Word and Excel. Service Pack 2 also addresses glitches with Access, FrontPage, Publisher, PowerPoint and SharePoint Team Services, as well as problems affecting all of Office.

Among the glitches fixed are: Failure to set transparent colour in PowerPoint; Word failure when running the Italian grammar checker; Outlook email attachments fail to appear when connecting to a Unix server; Pictures in documents saved in earlier Office versions are flipped; and problems displaying scrollbars in Access.

The service pack also addresses a problem with the wording of the German privacy policy and the inability to set Ukrainian as the default language when using the US or Ukrainian version of Office XP.

The service pack is available at http://office.microsoft.com/ProductUpdates/default.aspx

Joe Wilcox writes for News.com