Second try for Office 97 update

After clearing the gremlins out its next Office 97 service release for about a month, Microsoft has re-released the update.

Service Release 2 (SR-2) was yanked from the company's Office Update Web site after the software giant confirmed certain situations in which the latest Office 97 patch will fail to install properly.

SR-2 for Office 97 is now posted to the site for download. The update is free to Office 97 users and includes all of the product fixes developed since Service Release 1. Office 97 users can either download the release or order the CD.

The removal of the patch on September 28 came just days after the service release drew complaints from users and an advisory from the bug-finding group BugNet.

To install Office 97 SR-2, users must already have Office 97 SR-1 on their computer. SR-1 is also available for download off the update site and available on the SR-2 CD.

The new Office 97 SR-2 contains a number of upgrades including support for Euro currency changes and Year 2000 fixes. It also contains the Excel 97 for Windows Auto-Recalculation Patch, but if users don't want the new service release, they can download the Excel recalculation patch alone from the Office update Web site.