There’s no nice way to say it – this month’s Office 2013 update is, in military speak, ‘Fubar’
With the usual collection of security patches this month, Microsoft released an update to Office 2013 with various fixes and adding one major bug that amazingly managed to get through testing.
The update is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2817630/ which has now been withdrawn by Microsoft for reasons that will become obvious.
The patch fixes a grab-bag of problems, listed below, but can add a major and obvious new bug – the folder pane in Outlook 2013 disappears!
The folder pane seems to disappear, in fact it’s still there just hidden and inaccessible behind an oversized Minimise button. The cause is a version mismatch between two Office files – outlook.exe and mso.dll .
The problem only applies to people who installed Office 2013 from a download or disk – an ‘MSI installation’. Subscription users or anyone else installing via streaming ‘Click to Run’ should not be affected.
Here’s the kicker – Office customers who follow Microsoft’s recommendation to install Office updates automatically are the most likely to be affected.
To fix the problem, go to Add/Remove Programs in Windows:
- Uninstall the KB2817630 update.
- Uninstall the KB2817347 ‘August Cumulative’ update
- Wait for Microsoft to fix the bug and release a properly tested update.
According to Microsoft only ‘MSI’ or non-streaming installs of these products are affected;
- Office 2013 Standard
- Office 2013 Professional Plus
They also say the following Office 2013 bundles are not affected: Home & Student, Home & Business, Professional, Home Premium, Professional Plus, University, Small Business Premium, ProPlus and Enterprise.
There’s no doubt that updating Office is a complex process, but Microsoft has been paid billions of dollars by customers that goes to employ thousands of people and sophisticated technology to test updates before they go public.
This wasn’t an obscure bug, it happens to any customer who did what Microsoft told them to do (and are prompted during install) – automatically update Office. And the patch bug is very obvious to anyone opening Outlook.
Clearly Microsoft’s testing needs a major overhaul – there’s been too many bugs caused by patches in recent months.
When the KB2817630 patch works properly, it fixes the following bugs:
- You cannot press Ctrl+Tab to switch conversation tabs in a folder in Lync 2013.
- When you use speech recognition to control the scroll button on the scroll bar or the increment and decrement buttons on the ribbon in Office 2013 applications, the buttons are continuously pressed, and the speech recognition software freezes.
- Assume that you set a custom filter for a column header in the Datasheet view of a list on a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 site. Then, you switch to the Standard view, and then back to the Datasheet view. When you set a custom filter, the drop-down fields are missing in the custom filter.
- Assume that you zoom the text in the instant message input area in Lync 2013 to a value greater than or less than 100 percent. When you type some text in the instant message area, the zoom setting is not applied to the typed text.
- Assume that antivirus software is running on the computer. When you open a document in Protected View in an Office 2013 application, the Office 2013 application stops responding.
- When you share content in Lync 2013, there is a persistent white bar at the bottom of the screen. For example, this issue can occur when you share a PowerPoint presentation and start a Q&A session.
- Assume that you set the display language of Windows to a language. When you set the display language to Match Microsoft Windows in the Microsoft Office 2013 Language Preferences dialog box, the display language of Office 2013 is incorrect.
- When you change the dots per inch (DPI) setting in Windows to a high value such as 125 or 150, some icons in Office 2013 applications are displayed incorrectly.
- When you set the DPI setting in Windows to a value greater than 150, the ribbon and status bar are displayed incorrectly.
- When you change the DPI setting in Windows to a high value such as 200, temporary buttons like AutoCorrect Options and Paste Options are positioned incorrectly and have too much padding.
- When you set the DPI setting in Windows to 200, some ribbon icons in Office 2013 applications appear blurry.
- Assume that you set the location to Croatia on the computer. When you start Microsoft Word 2013, Microsoft Excel 2013, or Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 for the first time, the Default File Types dialog box does not appear.
- When you use a third-party application that uses MAPI, the application may crash.
See Also
- Automatic updates for Office subscribers
- Broken Office patches – update
- The NeverEnding Office 2007 updates
