HowTo-Outlook

Earlier than expected, Microsoft has released the RTM versions of the Office family to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

The Office 2013 family includes the following products:

• Office 2013
• Exchange 2013
• Visio 2013
• Project 2013
• SharePoint Server 2013
• Office Web Apps 2013
• Lync Server 2013

Currently only the English versions are available for download but expect the localized versions to become available soon as well.

The Office 2013 RT edition which ships with Windows RT tablets such as the Microsoft Surface tablet has also been published as an update to Microsoft Update. So for the early birds who will get their Surface tablet this Friday, you can immediately update the included Office 2013 Customer Preview to the released version.

Note that the Office version which ships with Windows RT/Surface tablet does not contain Outlook but only Word, Excel and PowerPoint. To sync your Outlook data with a Windows RT tablet see: Outlook, Windows RT and the Surface tablet

The testing phase of all the Office 2013 products have ended and reached the RTM status, which is the version that is ready to ship to customers. This also includes the server family of the Office products such as Exchange, SharePoint and Lync.

Availability
General availability is planned for the first quarter of 2013 (most likely the last week of January or the first week of February). When you purchase Office 2010 on or after October 19, you’ll receive Office 2013 for free when it becomes available.

When you bought a Windows RT device such a Microsoft Surface, which will become available on October 26, it will still include a preview version of Office 2013.

MSDN and TechNet subscribers as well as Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as the server products by mid-November.

Office 365 subscribers will see their server-side services being updated between November and February.

View: Office Reaches RTM!
View: The New Exchange Reaches RTM!
View: 30 Short questions and tips for Outlook 2013

A security update has been released for Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010 which also affects the respective versions of Outlook. It is recommended to install this security update as soon as possible.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-064
This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. The more severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens or previews a specially crafted RTF file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

How is Microsoft Outlook affected by the vulnerabilities?
Outlook is not directly affected because the vulnerabilities exist in Microsoft Word. However, if Word is the selected email reader, which is the default case in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010, then an attacker could leverage Outlook for the email attack vector to exploit CVE-2012-2528 by sending a specially crafted RTF email message to the target user.

View: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-064

Note: If you have Microsoft Update configured to also update other Microsoft applications, then this update will also also be offered via Microsoft Update or has already been updated automatically for you.

Microsoft has re-released the latest update rollups for Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007 to address an issue in which digital signatures on files produced and signed by Microsoft will expire prematurely.

The Exchange Team also liked to mention that the re-released Update Rollup for Exchange 2010 SP2 RU4 now also includes the following fix:

• KB2756987: Outlook only returns one result after you click the “Your search returned a large number of results. Narrow your search, or click here to view all results” message

Download: Update Rollup 8-v2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (KB2756497)Download: Update Rollup 7-v2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (KB2756496)
Download: Update Rollup 4-v2 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (KB2756485)

View: Microsoft Security Advisory 2749655