Microsoft has released Office 2007 SP1, an update for all Office clients. This is the client application Service Pack -- a rollup of bug fixes and other patches that Microsoft has released in year since Office 2007 went public. 

The service pack is a mere 218MB (50% of the size of the original distribution)… ha!  Why’s it so big? Well, Microsoft also incorporated a number of fixes for bugs that they previously had pretended didn’t exist, unless “called to task”, like the highly problematic (and baffling as to how it slipped by) bug related to Excel’s handling of 65534 and 65536. A quick analysis of the Excel file that lists fixes shows over 300 fixes that had no KB article, versus less than half that amount that did.

There are enough fixes and security tweaks that this service pack, like all major updates, should be tested extensively before it is widely deployed. Microsoft has not had a great track record with Office service packs, so listen to the “buzz” as others stub their toes.

The Service Pack is not (yet) on Microsoft Update, but can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9EC51594-992C-4165-A997-25DA01F388F5&displaylang=en

The KB article about the Service pack is http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936982.

And the Excel file that lists all the changes is at http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/C/F/BCFBEC81-ED9E-40A3-BBF0-1410B67A365A/Office%202007%20Service%20Pack%201%20Changes_all.xls