Kurt Shintaku's Blog

What’s new in Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2?

Office 2003 Service Pack 2 contains significant stability and performance improvements for Office client applications as well as servers. Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update.

Why should I upgrade?

SP2 is an update to Office programs and servers that addresses top customer experience issues. To optimize the customer experience with SP2, Microsoft recommends people update their Office applications and servers to take advantage of the improved stability of the Office system.

• Improved Security – SP2 includes an enhancement to Outlook to help prevent “Phishing.” Outlook has also improved the handling of “Junk” email. Junk messages are now rendered as plain text, preventing HTML information from being viewed inadvertently. Links are also now disabled in “Junk” email messages with SP2.
• Improved application stability – SP2 includes many fixes and enhancements for Office applications and servers based on customer and partner feedback as well as extensive internal testing.
• Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 – Microsoft Content Management Server, Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft InfoPath 2003 have been updated to include support for the upcoming releases of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has been updated to include support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005.