Microsoft releases updates for Office 2011 and 2008 for OS X

Microsoft has released updates for Office 2011 and Office 2008, both of which are the only Office suites that will run in OS X Lion since they contain code for Intel chips. The update addresses critical security flaws in the program that could allow an attacker to execute malicious code on a system, and also provides a number of fixes and improvements to the programs, including the following:

Office 2011:

• Office documents not opening in some Web browsers
• PowerPoint crashing unexpectedly when using Command-Tab
• Excel crashing when switching workbooks or when saving files
• Dutch citations not appearing properly in Word
• Contact images not showing in Outlook's Contacts Search box
• Shared calendars in Outlook now have an option for removing from view
• Outlook now properly shows free/busy status on exchange 2003 mailboxes
• Time Zones are now properly managed in Outlook

In addition, this update blocks the ability to import data from Apple's Mail program when running in OS X Lion. For now Microsoft has not developed a workaround to this incompatibility, so the quickest option to prevent problems is to disable this feature. Microsoft has promised updates to Office to take advantage of various new Lion features like Fullscreen and Autosave, but this update does not include these new features.

Office 2008:

• Fixes a problem with help files not showing in some languages
• Addresses time zone management in Entourage

The updates should be available via Microsoft's Autoupdate utility, which can be run from the Help menu of any Office application, or can be downloaded and applied manually from the following locations:

Office 2008 for Mac (12.3.1) update

Office 2011 for Mac (14.1.3) update

As always, be sure to fully back up your system before applying these updates, and then test the programs to ensure they work properly after being updated. If a problem occurs, then you can revert your system to the backup and either try updating again or address the issues that lead to the problem.

Questions? Comments? Have a fix? Post them below or e-mail us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.