The Mac BU consistently seeks and uses customer feedback to identify, prioritize and then improve its products through beta programs in pre-release stages. The team looks to user forums and tools such as the Microsoft Error Reporting Protocol (MERP), which allows customers to anonymously communicate issue reports, once a product is launched. With the launch of SP1, the Mac BU is addressing the top issues as reported by customers via MERP and other feedback channels. Office 2008 for Mac SP1 features key suitewide updates for increased stability, increased security and overall performance improvements. Users also will find application-specific updates, including the following:

Microsoft Office Excel

•Compatibility. Improved compatibility with files exchanged between Excel 2008 for Mac and Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for Windows

•Custom Error Bars. Restored formatting option on the Error Bars panel for data series

•Printing. More reliable printing for elements on Excel 2008 workbooks

Microsoft Entourage

•Calendar. Significant enhancements to improve calendar view and all-day reminders with reoccurrence

•Exchange Server support. Overall improvement to synchronization support, including removing attachments from Exchange Server messages and synchronizing to the server, as well as support for editing the contents of Exchange server messages via AppleScript and synchronizing the changes to the server

•E-mail images. Ability to send and view images in Entourage from third-party tools

Microsoft Office Word

•Printing. Improved accuracy when orienting tables with cell shading

•Document map. Improved reliability and responsiveness to select items

•Notebook layout. Updated formatting, recording status and a variety of display options

Microsoft Office PowerPoint

•Printing. Improvements to eliminate crashing when printing documents to high-dpi printers and increased overall printing speed by 10 times on some large presentations

•Mobile viewing. Ability to view Mac .PPTX files on Windows Mobile phones

•AppleScript. Ability to use the PowerPoint selection object in AppleScript to implement custom scripts that operate on the current selection in PowerPoint

Customers can download the update for free at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx, and it will be also available from Microsoft Auto Update.

Source- Microsoft Press Release