Microsoft announces end of Office 2007 – ‘RTM’ is nigh.
Microsoft has sent an email announcing the end of the Office 2007 beta.
That means the ‘Release to Manufacturing’ (RTM) will be in the next few weeks.
There won’t be a ‘Release Candidate’ put out for wider testing – the last Office 2007 beta is the ‘Technical Refresh’ B2TR which will keep working until the middle of March 2007.
All that means Redmond is on track for corporate and some other customers to get Office 2007 in November with a retail release in January 2007.
Here’s the full message from Microsoft:
“At this time, we are pleased to announce that the 2007 Office system will be released to manufacturing (RTM) in the next few weeks. We thank you for your participation in the planning, development, and testing of this new release.
No. We are not planning to make any further builds available to technical beta testers. Office 2007 products will be available in retail channels early next year. The Beta2TR build is set to expire on March 15, 2007 for all client products and May 31, 2007 for all server products. This should allow you to use Beta2TR until you can upgrade to the retail version.
You may upgrade/migrate server products from Beta2TR to the retail release. However, all Beta version client applications (Office Professional, OneNote, SharePoint Designer, etc.) will need to be uninstalled before you install retail versions on your machine. ”
