Microsoft re-releases Office for Mac 2011 upgrade after fixing bugs

Computerworld - Microsoft yesterday re-released Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 2 (SP2) after fixing a bug that wormed into the original update.

Last Friday, three days after it first issued Office for Mac 2011 SP2, Microsoft yanked the upgrade from its automatic update service when it acknowledged a bug had corrupted the Outlook database on some machines.

In a post on the Office for Mac blog yesterday, Microsoft said the revised SP2 "fixes a number of issues," including the database corruption problem.

While SP2 offered improvements for several applications in the suite, most targeted the Outlook email client bundled with the upper-end retail edition, Home and Business, as well as the academic and enterprise versions.

The new SP2 will repair any databases corrupted by the original upgrade, said Microsoft in a support document, which also spelled out tips for migrating AppleScript and Autocorrect lists to new folder destinations.

Although Microsoft's support forums do not yet include messages from users who have applied the SP2 re-release, customers have not been shy about commenting on last week's gaffe.

"I'm really upset with this SP2 update," said someone identified as "ggruda" in a message added to a long support thread Tuesday. "Who has the time to go through all the BS to get their database rebuilt and get Outlook running again? I'm looking for an alternative."

All Office for Mac 2011 users will be offered the revised SP2, including those who had downloaded the original April 12 version.

Microsoft has been forced to yank, then re-release, updates before. The most embarrassing blunders in recent years were in February 2010 when it stopped serving a security update to Windows XP PCs that were crashing with the notorious "Blue Screen of Death," and two years earlier, when Microsoft shut down an update for Windows Vista that crippled systems with endless reboots.

Office for Mac 2011 debuted in October 2010, and is available in two editions for the general public, as well as others for academic and enterprise customers.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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