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Office Services and the hidden Updates

In any ideal world, there’s just one action necessary to update your copy of Office for Windows.  We don’t live in an ideal world.

In the Research pane, mostly used for Translation but also other lookups, there may be a small link at the bottom ‘Get updates to your services’.

Even if that link isn’t there, click on ‘Research options …’ then Update/Remove.

Click on a group of services then ‘Update …’

Choosing Update will usually get the response ‘The services were updated successfully’ which appears whether there were any changes or not.  Click on ‘Update’ twice in a row to see what we mean.

Even more strange, our Office 2016 for Windows had a service added ‘Factiva iWorks’ after updating the ‘Thesauri’.  But that new service can’t be updated.  Most likely it’s a defunct service that Microsoft hasn’t properly dropped.

Updating the Translator section lets you update or add translate modules for various combinations.

Aside from the Translator, any real updates will probably not make a noticeable difference.

All this is hidden away and not linked at all to the main update system (File | Account | Update Options).   Maybe one day there’ll be a true ‘one click’ update available for Office (and Windows) but don’t hold your breath.

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