News

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2007 SP2 has been released.

For a list of changes that are included in this update rollup, see KB971534.

Download: Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (KB971534)

After official testers and MSDN and TechNet subscribers got their hands on the new test build of Office 2010, the Office 2010 Public Beta program has now become active as well. So as of now, anyone could get some hands on with Office 2010.

You’ll find that Outlook has gotten a major overhaul with the Ribbon now in the main program as well and a completely new Options dialog. If you have a hard time finding things, take a look at this guide which lists the locations of the most common options in Outlook.

The Outlook Social Connector is a completely new add-in which introduces “The People Pane”. This pane gives you some related information of the person you are in contact with or persons that have been added to the conversation. You can find out more about the Outlook Social Connector on the Outlook Team Blog.

More about the entire Office 2010 product line (which also includes Exchange and SharePoint) can be found here.

Download: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta

For all you testers out there; Microsoft has just released a new beta release of Microsoft Office 2010. Its build number is 14.0.4536.1000 which is a significant step forward of the 4006 Technical Preview release which had been available for some time now.
Currently it is only available to testers via Connect and people with a TechNet or MSDN subscription. A broader beta release available to everyone is upcoming as well and even expected this week.

The Outlook Team has posted some new developer content at MSDN regarding Outlook 2010 BETA.

The topics covered are;

Extending the User Interface in Outlook 2010

Programming the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module

Shutdown Changes for Outlook 2010 Beta

What’s New for Developers in Outlook 2010

Microsoft had already confirmed that the Public Beta would be released in November.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is now globally available.

More about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can be found on the official Microsoft Exchange Server website.

You can download the trial here. If you have a TechNet, MSDN or Action Pack subscription, it should now also be available to you.

A new Hotfix has been released for Outlook 2007 that solves a whole heap of issues.

Amongst others, it fixes a crashing issue that Exchange administrators were facing when importing pst-files via the import-mailbox cmdlet in PowerShell.

Another notable issue that got fixed is that since installing SP2, the Quick Click category was no longer saved.

As said, a lot of other issues got fixed as well and, interestingly enough, despite the update being language neutral, quite a few apply to the Hebrew language.

Since this is a hotfix and not a regular update, you won’t be offered this update via Microsoft Update but will have to request it. You can do this at the information page of the hotfix which also list all the other things that got fixed. If you are not (seriously) effected by any of these issues, it is recommended to wait for the next Service Pack or regular Rollup Update which will most likely contain all these fixes as well.

The Interoperability team at Microsoft announced that it will open up the pst-file format specifications to the public under the Open Specification Promise (OSP) license. This means that other developers would be free to use the pst-file format in their solutions and read/write to it without any restrictions. Currently it requires Outlook to be installed and using the Messaging API (MAPI) or the Outlook Object Model (OOM).

The documentation is still in the early development stages and the final version of the documentation is expected to be released in the first half of 2010.

More information about this can be found at the blog of of the Interoperability Team and at the blog of the Outlook Team.

I’ve released an updated version of OutlookTempCleaner. In short, I added support for Outlook 2010, fixed a bug and did some fine-tuning. Of course, OutlookTempCleaner still remains free.

Some more details;

• Outlook 2010 is now properly recognized (1.0 contained only preliminary support for Outlook 2010).
• Fixed a bug where a message box could pop-up when using OutlookTempCleaner in silent mode (via a logon script for example) and no version of Outlook is installed on that system.
• Tweaked the size display of the folder to report in KB instead of as 0MB when the folder is less then 1MB in size.

You can find more info about OutlookTempCleaner and download it here.

Several security updates have been released for Outlook 2002/XP, 2003 and 2007. More details about these security updates can be found in their respective security bulletins;

KB973965: MS09-060: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) ActiveX Controls for Microsoft Office could allow remote code execution.

KB957488: MS09-062: Vulnerabilities in GDI+ could allow remote code execution.

In addition, there are updates for the Junk E-mail Filter of Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.

The easiest way to get these updates and to install them is via Microsoft Update.

Note that if you are a home user and need support with these security updates, you’re entitled to no-charge support via your local Microsoft subsidiary.

The Microsoft Office Team has announced some changes in the way that it will make Microsoft Office available on machines that are pre-loaded with Office by an OEM. Two notable changes are;

• You can unlock a pre-loaded version via a Product Key Card. There is no need to uninstall any trial and then reinstall it with the CD/DVD that came with the boxed version.
• Microsoft Works will go away and will be replaced by the free Microsoft Office Starter 2010. It will only be available for shipment with new PCs and contain a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Word and Excel.

Another change is in the way that you can try (and buy) Office 2010 on existing PCs via Click-to-Run.