According to an unconfirmed report that I received last night, Microsoft is working on a third major bug fix release for its Office 2000 product, which it will curiously call "Service Pack 2" instead of "Service Release 2." Office 2000 SP2 follows Office 2000 SR1a with an October 14th release date, and the patch will require that SR1a is installed first. And unlike the previous collections of bug fixes for Office 2000, SP2 will apparently be "patch-only," meaning that Microsoft will not reissue the full product with these fixes preinstalled, as it did with SR1a. The document I received noted that Office SP2 will contain all of the post-SR1a public patches and updates for Office 2000.
Microsoft is designing Office 2000 SP2 for corporate environments and will, as such, not advertise it heavily or even offer it directly from the Office Update Web site, according to a marketing FAQ viewed by WinInfo Daily Update. The SP2 release is really just a way to give corporations a simple way to roll out numerous bug fixes at a single time, so SP2 will come in an administrative version that can be rolled into an Office installation share. The other SP2 version, the so-called client version, will update individual users' Office 2000 SR1a installation. A CD-ROM version of SP2 will include SR1a, as it's a prerequisite for SP2.
To find Office 2000 SP2 once it's release, head on over to the Microsoft Office Resource Kit Toolbox page. The update will not be directly downloadable from Office Update and will not be connected to Office 2000's AutoUpdate technology
