Microsoft revealed this week that it is on track to ship the first service pack for Office 2010 by the end of June. Office 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will be made available for the Office productivity suites, the Office Web Apps, and SharePoint 2010, and will provide functional changes as well as bug fixes, Microsoft says. And with this release, Microsoft will also be officially supporting Google's Chrome browser in the Office Web Apps.
The announcement came during the TechEd 2010 trade show being held this week in Atlanta, Georgia.
"Office 2010 SP1 will include many interesting changes," a post on the Office Sustained Engineering blog reads. "Across the client suites and server products, SP1 offers a sprinkling of improvements to make a strong 2010 release wave even stronger."
Among the changes coming in Office 2010 SP1 are:
- PowerPoint: "Use Presenter View" changed to display the slide show on the secondary monitor.
- SharePoint Server: Improved backup / restore functionality.
- Word Web App: Printing support extended to Edit mode.
- Office Web Apps: Full support for Internet Explorer 9 and Google Chrome.
- Excel Web App: Charts can be inserted in workbooks.
- Outlook Web App: Attachment preview (Exchange Online)
(For a full list of changes, please refer to the previously mentioned blog post.)
Each of the products affected by SP1 will also include a roll-up of previously-release bug-fixes as well as new fixes that are unique to this release. Microsoft notes that Office 2010 SP1 represents a milestone in the support lifecycle of Office and SharePoint 2010 versions, meaning that at some point it will cut off support for pre-SP1 versions.
