Microsoft Issues Second Office XP Service Pack

Yesterday, Microsoft released Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), a collection of bug fixes for the company's best-selling office productivity suite. Office XP SP2 is available as a Web download, on CD-ROM, or as a special version for corporate rollouts. SP2 fixes affect the Office XP Web Components and all major Office XP applications, including Microsoft Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Access 2002, FrontPage 2002, and Publisher 2002.

"The SP2 update contains significant security enhancements as well as stability and performance improvements," Microsoft states on its Web site. "Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update."

To download the client version of Office XP SP2, you must first install SP1. Visit the Microsoft Web site for details and the free downloads.

To order Office XP SP2 on CD-ROM, go to the Microsoft Web site.

Administrators who want to roll out SP2 can do so several ways, such as using a slipstreaming feature that adds the SP2 fixes to an Office XP install share on a network. For more information about installing SP2 in a corporate environment, refer to the Microsoft Web site.