The third service pack includes two main categories of fixes. The service pack includes all public updates, security updates, hotfixes and other updates that were released for Office 2007 through September 2011. It also includes fixes that were made specifically for the service pack. This includes according to Microsoft “general product fixes and improvements in stability, performance and security”.

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 3 is a cumulative update, which means that it includes all fixes that were part of Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 for Office 2007. Office users and administrators can install the third Service Pack release to apply all patches to the software.

The service pack can be downloaded via Windows Update or Microsoft Update automatically, or manually from Microsoft’s Download Center.

The following link points to the download of the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 3 (SP3) on Microsoft’s Download Center. The Office Language Pack 2007 is available as an alternative download as well. Please note that there is only one version of the service pack available (no 32-bit and 64-bit edition).

The core improvements are the following ones:

• Documents that require custom security trimming are not returned from alert search queries, even if the user who created the alert could see and query for these documents.
  Non-Unicode characters in certain error message strings now display correctly.
• Four new bibliography styles are now available in the “Word Citations & Bibliography” feature: Harvard Anglia, IEEE, APA Sixth Edition, and MLA Seventh Edition.
• Chinese New Year holiday is now included in the Outlook calendar for Singapore.
• Fixes an issue in which Excel 2007 sometimes crashes when you open an Excel workbook previously saved in a newer version of Excel. This occurs if the file uses a new feature that is not available in the 2007 Office system.
  Fixes issues with the Pre and Post Reform rules in the French Thesaurus.
• Fixes an issue in which encryption settings are not configurable when they are used with a file format compatibility pack converter and Office 2003 or an earlier version of Office.
• Fixes an issue in which a crash sometimes occurs when an Excel workbook is opened in Excel and then previewed by using the Windows Explorer preview pane feature.
• Fixes an issue in which Excel Slicers and Ribbon customizations are lost when an XLSX file is first saved as an ODS file, and then saved as an XLSX file in Excel 2007.

Office users and administrators who notice issues after installing the service pack can use Microsoft’s Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite to uninstall the service pack without affecting the core Office 2007 installation.

The description of Office 2010 SP1 page details the new features and updates of the service pack. Here is a short list of the most promising new features, fixes and updates.

• Stability, Performance and backward compatibility of Excel 2010 has been improved.
• Office 365 support has been added to Outlook 2010
• PowerPoint Viewer is now included when selecting the Package for CD option
• Fixes the following error message in Word 2010: Microsoft Office Word has encountered a problem and needs to close.
• Fixes Word co-authoring issues and conflicts.
• Open OneNote notebooks from Windows Live SkyDrive
• OneNote synchronization improvements with SharePoint and Windows Live SkyDrive.

As you can see from this list and the official listing at the Microsoft KnowledgeBase, there has not been many feature additions. A lot of the features improve cloud connectivity or fix minor issues. That is, apart from all the updates, especially security related, that the majority of Office 2010 users have probably downloaded before.

Last month’s Technet blog post announcing the upcoming service pack 1 for Office 2010 offered additional details on feature additions.

• Office Web Applications are not officially supported under Google Chrome.
• Outlook Web Application Attachment Preview (with Exchange Online only)
• Backup and restore has been improved for SharePoint Server

The very same blog post lists the fixes and updates that have been previously released by Microsoft and are included in the service pack.

Microsoft Office users can download the service pack from Windows Update, Microsoft Update or via Microsoft’s Download Center.

The 32-bit Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 has a size of 361 Megabytes, the 64-bit SP1 one of 439.

Microsoft Office 2010 SP1 Download Links

Here are the direct download links of Office 2010 Service Pack 1, helpful if you want to update more than one Office 2010 installation without downloading the update multiple times.

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2460049) 32-bit Edition [link]
Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 (KB2460049) 64-bit Edition [link]

But there are also unofficial ways to download and install Windows Updates. WSUS Offline Update can for instance offers to download all Microsoft updates for Windows operating systems or Microsoft Office.

The software program has been updated in the past days to include the most recent Windows and Office updates, specifically the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack.

Here is how it works. You need to unpack the portable application to a local directory before you can start the UpdateGenerator.exe file. This opens the interface that you see on the screenshot above.

Operating systems are sorted by version and language. It is possible to select multiple updates at once, for instance for Windows 7 and Office 2010, or different languages.

Several options are displayed at the bottom of the screen. It is for instance possible to create ISO images that can be burned to disc, include service packs, the .NET Framework, Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender definitions in the update or copy updates directly to an USB stick.

The updates are downloaded via a command prompt. This may take a while depending on the updates that have been selected.

The command prompt closes after the downloads have been completed. They can then be installed directly on the local system by starting UpdateInstaller.exe from the client directory.

The available choices depend largely on the system and range from installing Internet Explorer (up to IE9 RC), the .NET Framework 4.0 to Powershell and Microsoft Security Essentials.

A click on Start begins the system update. Windows does not need an Internet connection for this since all updates have been downloaded previously to the computer system.

What are the benefits of using WSUS Offline Update? The program can save bandwidth if multiple computer systems need to be updated. Integration of all available updates for a specific version of Windows and Office make it an ideal product for offline updates, especially for computers who have no Internet connection, or unpatched computers where the user wants to update the system first before going online.

WSUS Offline Update can be downloaded from the official website.

The easiest way to download and install the patches is by pointing the Internet Explorer web browser to Microsoft Update which will automatically detect and install the available patches for the computer system. Other possibilities include downloading the security patches from Microsoft Download Center from where they are available as well.

Six vulnerabilities have been rated as critical, three as important and one as moderate. Critical security vulnerabilities can usually be exploited for remote code execution meaning it is essential to fix these vulnerabilities quickly. You can follow the links below for additional information about each vulnerability.

• MS09-018 – Vulnerabilities in Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution (971055)
• MS09-019 – Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (969897)
• MS09-020 – Vulnerabilities in Internet Information Services (IIS) Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (970483)
• MS09-021 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (969462)
• MS09-022 – Vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler Could Allow Remote Code Execution (961501)
• MS09-023 – Vulnerability in Windows Search Could Allow Information Disclosure (963093)
• MS09-024 – Vulnerability in Microsoft Works Converters Could Allow Remote Code Execution (957632)
• MS09-025 – Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (968537)
• MS09-026 – Vulnerability in RPC Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (970238)
• MS09-027 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (969514)