Word 2007 Service Pack 2 - the official fix list

Office WatchLast updated: 17 July 2018

The official fix list for Word 2007 SP2 both the summary and the complete list.

Here’s the official fix list for Word 2007 SP2 – both the summary and the complete list. We’ve published it here for easy reference instead of hunting around Microsoft’s web site and an Excel worksheet.

The main change in Word 2007 related to the OpenDocument ODF format which is now supported alongside Microsoft’s own OpenXML .docx format.

The Save As PDF or XPS option no longer has to be downloaded separately – at long last.

Of longer term interest is the new Extensible File Formats feature. Microsoft has put ‘hooks’ into Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 which let other developers add their own file formats into the programs. We’ll be looking at that in details in coming weeks.

Word 2007 SP2 details are surprisingly short – perhaps worryingly short. Only 29 Word 2007 ‘issues’ are in the complete SP2 list compared with 236 for Excel 2007 and 104 for Outlook 2007? Maybe Word 2007 is more stable and bug free than its Office suite counterparts or maybe the fix list isn’t so complete.

The cryptic mention in the Word 2007 fix list of “Improves Outlook performance” presumably refers to fixes in Word 2007 acting as the default email editor in Outlook 2007.

It would be nice to know more details of the ‘fidelity’ improvements in PDF files. Many developers and companies make heavy use of PDF files and Microsoft should fully disclose changes in the export from Office 2007 feature. Some changes might impact on external systems making use of Office 2007 made PDF files.

This list does NOT include details of past hotfixes, security and other updates that are also bundled into Service Pack 2.

The list isn’t complete – Microsoft says there are other reliability, security and what they feel are minor bugs they consider ‘too specific’ to be publicly disclosed.

Summary

Improves the fidelity of .pdf and .xps output.
Improves Outlook performance.
Provides fuller integration of the Office Excel Chart Object Model.

File formats

OpenDocument Format (ODF) support
SP2 lets you open, edit, and save documents in version 1.1 of the ODF forWord, forExcel, and forPowerPoint. Users of these Office programs can now open, edit, and save files in the OpenDocument Text (*.odt), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods), and OpenDocument Presentations (*.odp) formats.
Extensible file formats
Extensible File Formats: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now include a converter interface that lets you plug third-party custom file formats into these Office programs. A developer can create a converter for files of a particular extension. When this converter is installed on a user’s computer, the custom file format effectively behaves like a built-in file format. Specifically, users can open files of this format and save them by using the Open or Save UI. They can even set the custom format as their default file format. For more information, visit the following MSDN Web site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd300649.aspx
Built-in Save As PDF/XPS support
PDF/XPS support is built into SP2 for Word, for Excel, and for PowerPoint. Users no longer have to download the add-in separately.

Complete list

All AutoCorrect and AutoFormat settings are set to Off when you install Microsoft Office Word on a system that has over 4 GB of memory.
Allow a return to the start of the document and a search to continue for next editable region.
Encrypting a document causes the file size to increase significantly.
If you add an equation to a document that is protected with IRM, and then you save the document, that document cannot be opened, even by an authorized user.
If you set the default save format in Microsoft Office Word while Microsoft Office Outlook is running, you close both programs, and you open Microsoft Office Outlook before you open Microsoft Office Word, then the default save format is not set.
Inserting a Quick Part that contains customer XML causes the XML tags to be reordered incorrectly.
OOXML schemas were updated to only specify a single import statement for each namespace.
Opening a file that has XML tags and afChuck tags causes data corruption in some cases.
Provide a registry key to set the highlight color of unprotected regions to allow better control over setting for text readability.
Spelling suggestions are greyed out (unavailable) in the Spelling and Grammar dialog box.
The “Job Title” mail merge field is mapped incorrectly when French is set as the Primary Editing Language.
The ability to add ink notations to a document is unavailable after you insert page numbers into a document.
The E-mail option on the Send menu is not available in Microsoft Office Word 2007 on systems that do not have Microsoft Office Outlook installed.
The Find or Replace commands incorrectly match a forward slash character (“/”) with any inserted picture.
The performance of the Resume sequence on a laptop is slow if Microsoft Office Word was running when the system was stopped.
The property panel closes without any action from the user when the document recovery file is saved or when the user explicitly saves the file.
The status bar displays “Running Virus Scan” for all new documents, and the message persists until a user action updates the status bar.
Triggering the spelling suggestions list requires two right-clicks instead of one.
When registry keys are set to block specific file formats from opening, an inaccurate message that requests the user to install the compatibility pack appears when the user tries to open a DocM file.
When you are editing a header by using content controls, the pointer disappears, and then the document shifts into Draft view.
When you are typing in a table that is inside an HTML document (and this includes e-mail messages), the content of the table disappears instead of being displayed in the correct color.
When you convert a DocX document that is set to preserve compatibility, and you save the document, the Maintain Compatibility option is reset incorrectly.
When you right-click the desktop or use the command on the shortcut menu to create a new document, this creates a document that has the out-of-box defaults instead of those that are stored in Normal.dotm file.
When you save a document that contains a table of contents that references a plain text content control that is formatted with a style that makes its contents appear in the table of contents, the document can no longer be opened.
When you save a document that has a comment around a plain text content control, the document can no longer be opened.
When you save a document that has highlight formatting on a complex script text (such as Arabic or Thai text), the highlight formatting is removed.
When you save a document that was recovered, Microsoft Office Word closes unexpectedly and uses the default file format instead of the file format of the original file.
When you work with tables that have repeating header rows on pages that contain columns, the pointer or the selection is not visible while you are editing the part of the table that is located on the first page.
You cannot access list templates in a document that contains list templates but that does not contain actual lists that use the list template in the document content.