Microsoft Updates Office 2008 and Office 2004

[walnuts]

Microsoft just release Office updates! Maybe some of the bugs will be fixed!

They released 12.1.2 for 2008 and 11.5.1 for 2004.

[MacRumors]

Microsoft today issued updates for both Office 2008 and Office 2004. The updates provide improvements to "stability and performance" and "address vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of a computer's memory by using malicious code."

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 Update weighs in at 159.6 MB and addresses security vulnerabilities and AppleScript reliability through the suite of Office applications, as well as providing specific performance improvements for Word, Excel, and Entourage. A full list of improvements is included on Microsoft's update description page.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.1 Update weighs in at 14.5 MB and addresses security vulnerabilities, as well as fixing a specific stability issue in Word 2004 involving documents containing numbered lists and updating the Japanese postal code dictionary in Entourage 2004. Microsoft's update description page details these improvements and provides additional information about the update.

Article Link

[aajad]

And I got the dreaded:

You cannot install Office 2008 12.1.2 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume.

AGAIN! Legal copy and this s@#t! Any ideas?

This happened with 12.1.1 also because I had deleted localizations. I followed snorkeller1's suggestions and I turned off Remove Localized Files in Macaroni so that I would not have this problem again. I checked the SLT.bundle and it has all languages so I am lost. Help anyone?

[Scepticalscribe]

Good to know, and thanks for that. Yes, "weighs in" is a very good way of describing it. The update is downloading just now, quite fully occupying my MBP and taking the best part of half an hour to do so. It has just struck me, looking at the details of this update, that this thing takes up a little over twice the whole HDD of my first computer, back in the very early 1990s. This update "weighs in" at 160 mb; my antique had 80mb, and ran a much more primitive (but not at all ineffective) version of MS Office, perfectly adequate for its day. A clock speed of 33mhz also crosses my mind. Hilariously, (in hindsight,) I also remember being introduced to the first desktop to have 1 GB in that entire section of our university, and the awed shiver which greeted it from staff and students alike. The date for that was mid 1990s. Has anyone else fond memories of computing antiquity? Cheers.

[r.j.s]

I love how it expands to take up a half-gig ... Word seems to boot up a little faster and is a little more responsive.

[Scepticalscribe]

Yes, I was just looking at that, and mentally doing the maths in my head; you're right. It does, er, seem to expand to half a gig. It is fortunate then, that we have the GBs to spare for good old MS. Cheers.

[Insulin Junkie]

I got that update. Think I would have skipped it though if I was tight on GB's...

[surroundfan]

I'm also having this problem, having previously removed languages with Monolingual. I will try the old remedy of reinstalling Office if the other trick of replacing the setup assistant with the one from 12.1.0 doesn't work. It really annoys me that MS couldn't be bothered amending their code despite the fact that a large number of people were inconvenienced with this issue when 12.1.1 was released.

Dear Microsoft, every other software developer can work around the fact that some people don't want several gigs of unwanted languages on their systems. Why can't you?

[Mindflux]

If you guys would quit tinkering with your macs and deleting the language files so that the program would pass the upgrade checks you wouldn't be in this boat.

[Scepticalscribe]

Word and the eternally tardy Excel both boot up far faster I'm delighted to report; however, it must be said this update was not before time given comments on other threads about Office 2008......cheers

[surroundfan]

Originally Posted by Mindflux

If you guys would quit tinkering with your macs and deleting the language files so that the program would pass the upgrade checks you wouldn't be in this boat.

I would if I had a Mac Pro with 1TB of storage, but I don't. Instead, I have a Mac Mini with an 80GB HDD (including 50GB of iTunes as well as a myriad of other stuff) meaning it's full to the brim. Every gig of space I can save, regardless of how I save it, is extremely valuable.

[Royale w/cheese]

Yep, Word, Excel, PowerPoint all boot faster (finally) I am happy to say, this was starting to get very annoying being I am running it on a penryn MBP.

Anybody check Safari's snappiness yet? (usually don't, but I had too)

[r.j.s]

I used xslimmer after the last update and didn't have any problems this time. I just slimmed them again, so we'll see when the next update comes out.

[e.m.]

Does the Office 2008 update require the previous update?

Like others here, I strip localizations. After finding that I couldn't install the update because of it, I didn't bother applying the update.

edit: I see that 12.1.1 is a requirement. Should of checked first.

[walnuts]

It seems to have fixed my issues with spaces. I'll know more after a more thorough test, but for a while there it was simultaneously funny and sad watching me chase windows around my spaces.

[ThunderBull4]

Takes up half a gig? Jesus christ.... what if we don't have that much to spare?

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by e.m.

Does the Office 2008 update require the previous update?

Like others here, I strip localizations. After finding that I couldn't install the update because of it, I didn't bother applying the update.

edit: I see that 12.1.1 is a requirement. Should of checked first.

Far out. They are making the same mistake as with 2004 all over again - eventually we will have to apply 12 separate updates again after a reinstall. And this time the updates are ridiculously much bigger to boot.

[SnowLeopard2008]

I run a MacBook with 120GB of HD space, shared with a Boot Camp partition for XP with 32GB. I'm still fine with the half gig updates, as they really don't take much space after you install. MS just likes to freak us out while in reality its alot less.

[mwp98223]

Originally Posted by aajad

And I got the dreaded:

You cannot install Office 2008 12.1.2 Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume.

AGAIN! Legal copy and this s@#t! Any ideas?

This happened with 12.1.1 also because I had deleted localizations. I followed snorkeller1's suggestions and I turned off Remove Localized Files in Macaroni so that I would not have this problem again. I checked the SLT.bundle and it has all languages so I am lost. Help anyone?

Yep. Same problem here all over again with both my iMac and Macbook. Why oh why does this happen with Office every single frickin time and no other software seems to have this trouble.

[kgarr]

Nope, spaces still freaks out, and it still decided that I can't save as a docx from time to time (tells me the drive is missing)

[peterdevries]

Calculation performance is improved.
This update improves the overall performance of calculations in Excel 2008, especially when you work with large data sets and complex formulas.

I have a worksheet with 60.000 rows without any formulas, but with some filtering etc. It is still incredibly slow. I'm really getting tired of this.

I have to resort to my Lenovo Thinkpad, which has half of the specs of my MBP to work on this sheet.

[snorkeller1]

Again, the Microsoft Office Setup Assistant/Contents/PlugIns/SLT.bundle from MSO'08 SP1 Update 12.1.0 had to be extracted, using Pacifist (look for Office2008_en_core_12.1.0.combo.pkg within the update-installer).

(The SLT.bundle, if extracted from the 12.1.1 updater, will result in empty .lproj language folders)

All that was needed was to move the various .lproj folders back into my de-localized copy of SLT.bundle; the other bundle components had been updated by the 12.1.1 updater and were left alone.

The multi-language 12.1.1(080522) SLT.bundle shows as 180,275 bytes in size and contains 11 .lproj folders, same specs as the new 12.1.2(080729) SLT.bundle with all languages.

Again, without fixing permissions, safe-booting, or shutting down other running applications, the 12.1.2 update went OK.

If your de-localized 12.1.1 installation is where it should be, you have admin access, and the above is no help, then something else in the Microsoft Office Setup Assistant app could be amiss or whatever. MS's elephant-gun-kill-a-flea approach may help ??

[kaiwai]

Hmm, I'm obviously doing something wrong because when I update Office, it works everytime.

[aajad]

Snorkeller1, you were a big help last time with 12.1.1, thanks. However, I have since stopped removing localizations (they're all in the 12.1.1 SLT.bundle) so this doesn't apply and it's still not working. Any other ideas?

[walnuts]

Originally Posted by kgarr

Nope, spaces still freaks out, and it still decided that I can't save as a docx from time to time (tells me the drive is missing)

That sucks with the spaces thing- I was looking forward to that working out. You know, spaces works so much bettter with illustrator CS2, which runs under rosetta and was written before the idea of spaces existed. Microsoft coulnd't fix it after three patches?

As for everyone upset about the half gig updates, isn't the half gig figure the gross addition and the net after deleting files from the last patch much less? The entire app folder is less than a gig for me now, and I've applied all three or four updates.