Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) on Tuesday will release Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2). Targeted mainly to enterprise users, the new service pack adds new features to enhance Exchange Server support in Entourage. SP2 updates all of the applications in Office 2004, but does not deliver Spotlight support to Mac OS X 10.4 users.
With SP2 users have improved access to the Global Address List (GAL), including the ability to browse the entire contents of the GAL and see full organizational detail. In previous versions, users were able to search the GAL, but not browse detailed information.
“It has been a continuing effort of ours to make sure Mac users in the enterprise are able to access similar types of information as their Windows counterparts,” Amanda Lefebvre, MacBU Marketing Manager, told MacCentral.
In addition, enhanced delegate access enables new setup entirely through Entourage without having to go through the Outlook client on a PC.
Other notable changes in Service Pack 2 include: Multiple calendar and address book views; Improved sharing; Enhanced public folder support; Improved client-server synchronization; and Better account management and mailbox quota tools.
SP2 also includes cumulative security updates and prioritized fixes for issues identified by Microsoft and through customer feedback.
One feature not included in SP2 is support for Apple’s Spotlight searching tool. Spotlight provides users with quick search capability from the desktop, but since Entourage information is contained in a single database, Spotlight cannot index the file.
“I don’t have any dates on that yet, but we are working on that. We are working with Apple very closely to see how we can address that,” said Lefebvre.
Service Pack 2 is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. Customers will be notified and may download SP2 via Microsoft AutoUpdate beginning today. Alternately the update can be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site.