Office 2004 SP2 Enhances Entourage, Fixes Bugs -- Microsoft has released Office for Mac 2004 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which fixes bugs in all the Office programs and provides notable enhancements to Entourage, the email, calendaring, and contact management part of the software suite. Entourage 2004 SP2 features enhanced support for Microsoft Exchange Server, making it easier for Mac users to coexist in a predominantly Windows and Outlook environment. Specific improvements include better email and calendar management, enhanced public folder support, faster client-server synchronization, improved access (with full browsing) to the Global Address List, and enhanced delegate access that makes new setup possible entirely through Entourage without needing to use Outlook on a PC. Entourage 2004 SP2 requires Exchange 2000 or later, and some organizations may need updates to Exchange.

Although Entourage was the only program with significant new features, all the other Office programs received numerous bug fixes and security improvements. You can read the full list at the link below, but we're happiest about the promised performance improvements in Word 2004 SP2 and the fix for the bug that crashed Word when you updated Table of Contents fields contained in a table cell, the two of which had been forcing us to rely primarily on Word X for our Take Control ebooks. Many of the bugs fixed resolve crashes, so if you've had trouble with Office 2004 applications crashing, be sure to install SP2. You can download Office for Mac 2004 SP2 via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility, or from Microsoft's Mactopia Web site; it's a 57 MB download. [ACE]

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/autoupdate/ description/AUOffice20041120EN.htm>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx>