Office 2010 SP1 To Release by June 2011

After more than 6 months of closed beta testing via Microsoft Connect, Microsoft finally revealed more information on the first service pack for Office 2010. The Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is set to released to manufacturing (RTM) and available for all by late June 2011. In other words, the Office 2010 SP1 is skipping both public beta and RC (Release Candidate) stage.

The announcement was made at TechEd 2011 at Atlanta. Both Office client suites and SharePoint server products will have the SP1 released, initially via manual download from the Download Center and from Microsoft Update, before been pushed through Automatic Update within 90 days of release.

The Office 2010 SP1 and SharePoint 2010 SP1 will include all public updates, hotfixes, and cumulative updates that been released to date releases to date, and represent a milestone in the support lifecycle of Office and SharePoint 2010 versions. In addition, the SP1 also includes various enhancements and improvements that intend to make Office 2010 an even better product.

Some highlights of changes included in SP1 are:

• Fixes an issue in Outlook where “Snooze Time” would not reset between appointments.
• The default behavior for PowerPoint “Use Presenter View” option changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
• Integrated community content in the Access Application Part Gallery.
• Better alignment between Project Server and SharePoint Server browser support.
• Improved backup and restore functionality for SharePoint Server.
• The Word Web Application extends printing support to “Edit Mode.”
• Project Professional now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists.
• Internet Explorer 9 to provide “Native” support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint.
• Office Web Applications support for Chrome.
• Inserting Charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application.
• Support for searching PPSX files in Search Server.
• Fixes scaling issues and arrowhead rendering errors in Visio with SVG export.
• Proofing Tools improve spelling suggestions in Canadian English, French, Swedish and European Portuguese.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only).
• Ability to uninstall the service pack for Office client suites using “Add Remove Programs” Control Panel.

The beta version of Office 2010 SP1 has been published to selected participants as private beta in Microsoft Connect since October 2010. In fact, both the 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions of Office 2010 SP1 Beta, namely officesuite2010sp1-kb2222233-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe and officesuite2010sp1-kb2222233-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe, together with Visio 2010 SP1 Beta (32-bit: visio2010sp1-kb2222242-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe and 64-bit: visio2010sp1-kb2222242-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe), Project 2010 SP1 Beta (32-bit: project2010sp1-kb2222235-x86-fullfile-en-us.exe and 64-bit: project2010sp1-kb2222235-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe) and 64-bit Sharepoint 2010 SP1 Beta (sharepointserver2010sp1-kb2222231-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe) have been leaked to the Web, although the download links have quickly been taken down by Microsoft. The SP1 beta program officially ended on Sunday, March 13, 2011, at 5:00 PM PST, though it’s unclear why Microsoft waits for months before officially rolling out the service pack.