News

Microsoft Releases Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 SP1

• By Kurt Mackie
• June 28, 2011

Amid the buzz over Office 365's launch, Microsoft also released the first service packs (SP1) for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Tuesday.

Office 2010 users will be able to bring their licensing to Office 365, which will also work with Office 2007 SP2 and more recent releases, according to Microsoft. The company released SP1 for Office for Mac 2011 in April.

SP1 for Office 2010 includes a roll-up of previously released updates, plus some new fixes, according to Microsoft's announcement, which provides the download links listed by program. Microsoft outlines the new fixes for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and other Office 2010-associated apps to be found in SP1 in this list (Excel download). SP1 for Office 2010 contains "Cumulative Updates released through April 2011 and all Public Updates released through June 2011," according to Microsoft.

SP1 for SharePoint 2010 and the free SharePoint Foundation 2010 includes cumulative updates through April 2011. The service pack adds new support for Microsoft's next SQL Server, code-named "Denali," according to Microsoft's documentation (download required). On top of that, continued support is provided for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005.

SP1 for SharePoint 2010 now offers browser support for "Internet Explorer 9 in Internet Explorer 8 Standards Mode," according to Microsoft's documentation. In addition, new support for the Google Chrome browser was added.

Microsoft added a new "shallow copy" data migration capability in the SP1 for SharePoint 2010 that will move structured data across databases while leaving the BLOB store as originally configured. Shallow copy functionality is carried out using the PowerShell "Move-SPSite" command. To use this feature, the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Remote Blob Store must be installed.

Microsoft added a site recycle bin in the SP1 for SharePoint 2010. It allows site collections to be restored if they have been inadvertently deleted by users.

The StorMan.aspx page, which helped users estimate their site storage quotas, originally had been removed from SharePoint 2010 by Microsoft. However, the company has now restored it with SP1, calling it an "improved" version.

For those with Windows Automatic Update turned on, Microsoft will deliver SP1 "as a manual download" at first. However, after a 90-day "grace period," it will be delivered automatically. Users of Microsoft's click-to-run technology will get SP1 automatically delivered starting July, according to the announcement.

Microsoft recommends that users who install SP1 for SharePoint 2010 also apply the June 2011 cumulative update, which will arrive "in the coming weeks," the announcement explained.