Office 2007 Service Packs
From time to time Microsoft releases Service Packs that fix various problems in the different Office programs. As of mid-2011, the most recent Service Pack (SP) for Office 2007 is SP2.
To see whether your copy of PowerPoint has been updated:
- Hold down ALT while you press F then I
- Click "Resources" on the left.
- At the bottom, under "about Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007" you'll see the version numbers of PowerPoint itself and MSO.dll (identified only as "MSO"). Just before "MSO" it'll say "SP1" or "SP2" if one of the service packs has been applied.
You want to be updated to SP2, then apply both of these hotfixes:
To download SP2:
- Go to the same Resources page again.
- Click Go Online to launch your browser and go to the Office Online site.
- Click Check for updates or click Downloads.
- Usually the most current available service pack will be listed at the top of the page. If not, look below in the Browse Downloads by Product area.
Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007 was released on 28 April, 2009. To learn more about it before you apply it, follow the link.
On the same page, there's a link to this Excel spreadsheet that lists the problems the service pack fixes.
Some of the list entries are a bit vague; we've noted a few fixes that aren't obvious from the Excel list:
- Previously, lines with a width of less than 1 point all printed at the same width and were indistinguishable; now they print at different widths.
- Previously, images exported at over a certain resolution became corrupted (cropped down with black bars); now they export correctly, up to the 3072 pixel limit imposed by PowerPoint itself.
- Previously, Run Macro action settings in a PPT (97-2003 format) file wouldn't trigger the macros when you opened the file in PowerPoint 2007; in order for them to work, you had to re-save the file as a PPTM (PowerPoint 2007 with Macros) format file. Now you can open the original PPT in PowerPoint 2007 and the Run Macro action settings work correctly.
Post-SP2 Updates
Office 2007 Cumulative Update for June 2009 describes several updates that have been released for Office 2007 applications (including PowerPoint) and Office 2007 components.
Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2007 Released 11 December, 2007
On 11 December 2007, Microsoft released Office 2007 SP1. It fixed some problems with PowerPoint in the original release of Office 2007, left others unfixed and actually introduced a troublesome bug causing exported images to become corrupted. If you already have SP1 installed, we recommend installing SP2 as well.
If you don't have any service packs installed, go straight to SP2, which includes all the fixes from SP1.