Microsoft updates Office 2004/2008, fixes vulnerabilities

On Tuesday Microsoft issued a few updates for its Office 2008 and Office 2004 suites for OS X, fixing security vulnerabilities with the Word and Excel programs that could result in a remote attacker executing code on the system through maliciously crafted Word and Excel documents.

The updates that address the security vulnerabilities are specifically for Office 2004, Office 2008, and Microsoft's "Open XML Converter" utility; however, Microsoft has also released an update for Entourage 2008 for Mac "Web Services Edition" that improves calendaring and synchronizing of notes, tasks, and categories with Exchange servers.

The updates can be installed using Microsoft's auto-updater utility in Office, or by downloading from the following Web pages:

Office 2008 For Mac 12.2.7

Office 2004 for Mac 11.6.1

Open XML Converter 1.1.7

The more significant update is that for Office 2008, which weighs in at 333MB, with the updater for Office 2004 being only 16MB in size. The OpenXML converter utility is a 45MB download. None of the updates should require you to restart your system; however, be sure to fully back up your computer before downloading, so you can restore your system if needed. Even though we do not expect the update to affect the system at all, there could be incompatibilities with third-party Office add-ons.

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