SharePoint 2010, Office 2010 Service Packs Slated for June Release
Microsoft announced at Tech-Ed this week that the first service packs for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 will be available by the end of June. They will be the first major updates for both products, which Microsoft released a year ago
. Microsoft indicated last month
that SP1 would be coming by mid-summer and that an announcement was pending at Tech-Ed.
Microsoft will offer SP1 as a manual update upon initial release; 90 days later, the updates will be delivered automatically, Microsoft said in a blog post. The company said all language versions of SP1 will be released simultaneously.
The release of SP1 comes as Microsoft's Office 365 is in widespread beta. The updates will impact those who subscribe to plans that include the Microsoft Office Professional Plus package, which consists of Office 2010 Professional.
According to the blog post, among the new features in SP1 are:
- A fix to the "Snooze Time" in Outlook so that it can reset between appointments,
- Improved backup and restore functionality for SharePoint Server,
- Word Web Application that extends printing support to "Edit Mode,"
- Project Professional that now synchronizes scheduled tasks with SharePoint task lists,
- Native Internet Explorer 9 support for Office Web Applications and SharePoint,
- Support for Google's Chrome browser in Office Web Applications, and
- The ability to insert charts into Excel Workbooks using Excel Web Application.
Microsoft said Office 2010 is the fastest-selling version of the product ever. For the most recent quarter, it posted 21 percent growth on $5.25 billion in sales.
Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.