Cumulative Updates for Microsoft Office on the Agenda

Microsoft said that it's moving away from weekly updates for Office to a more structured update schedule.

Previously Microsoft had issued cumulative updates for Office, meaning that each update contained all prior updates. However, the company hadn't moved toward regularly scheduled updates for Office as it does with its security updates. That will now change--the company has decided to issue updates every two months.

Aside from that, customers can still request what Microsoft calls "Critical On-demand (COD) hotfixes." A spokesperson for the company said that "COD fixes are limited to emergency situations, for example, one in which the issue is blocking normal business operations for the customer, and/or for which there is no effective workaround."

As an example of COD type updates, on July 8 Microsoft released "two critical non-security updates" for Outlook as well as two updates for Outlook Junk Email Filter.