Ever wish Outlook would load a little faster? Or that Word and Excel supported the increasingly popular OpenDocument format? Those are just a few of the perks found in Office 2007 Service Pack 2, which is now available for download from Microsoft. (You can also get it by way of Windows Update on your PC.) It’s a 290MB download, so you’ve got time to refill the ol’ coffee mug.
So, what else is newsworthy in SP2? Here are a few snippets from Microsoft program manager Jane Liles:
Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes. Users will experience considerable responsiveness and speed improvements on common, day-to-day operations like launching, synchronizing and searching.
With SP2, Office 2007 now has built-in support for Open XML, ODF and PDF, along with the dozen or so other formats that were already supported in Office 2007.
In addition to the support for additional file formats, SP2 also includes the Open XML Format External File Converter. This allows developers to make any third-party document format a first-class citizen in Office. This means Office will support most government-preferred formats, and can easily be made to support any others that come along.
Needless to say, there’s enough good stuff here to make Office 2007 SP2 a must-download. Personally, I’m excited about the improvements to Outlook’s IMAP access, as I’ve had sporadic trouble connecting to my Gmail account. [via Digital Inspiration]
