Microsoft Office for Mac os X 2011 SP1 Released

Microsoft has released the first Service Pack for its Apple Mac OS X based Office for Mac 2011 productivity suite. New Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 is applicable to all editions of the office productivity suites available for the Mac OS X platform. Users need to download the 246MB .dmg file from the Microsoft Mac Downloads site to install it.

The first Service Pack of Office for Mac 2011 brings major changes in Outlook application. Also, do note that this SP1 won't sync MobileMe calendar while using the Sync Services. That's due to the recent changes in the MobileMe and we anticipate Apple to release a free version of MobileMe in the coming months.

Apart from that, there are several enhancements and fixes for the productivity suite. 

Features of the update for all Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 applications include:
- Improved security: fixes vulnerabilities where an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of the computer's memory with malicious code.
- Improved Stability: fixes an issue that causes Office for Mac 2011 applications to close unexpectedly when you open or use Office for Mac 2011 applications.
- Alt Text authoring enabled for objects, such as shapes, pictures, tables, charts, SmartArt, and movies in Office 2011 applications.
- Protect PowerPoint for Mac 2011 presentations using passwords
- Install Solver add-in analysis tool in Excel for Mac 2011
- Increases support for Sync Services, and adds calendar, notes, and tasks syncing in Outlook for Mac 2011
- Support for Microsoft Exchange-based Server-Side rules in Outlook for Mac 2011
- Brings back the resend feature for an email message to the same or new recipients in Outlook for Mac 2011
- Redirect an incoming email message to other recipients in Outlook for Mac 2011
- Create meeting invitations by including a list of recently used locations in Outlook for Mac 2011

All Mac OS X platform users can download the Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 from here.