Why was 11.3.1 Pulled?

S

Scott Boettcher

Anyone from MS care to reply?
I¹ve installed it on my test Macs, and they ³appear² OK, but...

Scott
 
M

Michel Bintener

Information on accidental posting of pre-release security updates for Office
for Mac

We¹ve seen some questions from customers about some security updates that
posted for a while today for Office for Mac that they didn¹t see any security
bulletins for.

I wanted to let you know that these weren¹t security updates related to this
month¹s release or the two Word issues we¹ve written about in Security
Advisory 929433 and on our weblog: those investigations are still underway and
we¹ll release updates for those issues once we¹ve met the appropriate quality
bar. The updates posted in error were pre-release binaries that had been
staged internally as part of our testing for an upcoming release. Due to
human error, they were accidentally published to the public websites before
our full testing release process was complete.

As soon as we discovered the error, we moved quickly to address it and remove
the pre-release binaries from our public sites.

Once our investigation into this issue is complete and we have security
updates that meet our quality bar for release, we¹ll release those final
security updates for all products affected along with a security bulletin.
We¹re also taking steps to ensure a mistake like this doesn¹t happen again.

We recommend that anyone who may have installed these pre-release updates to
uninstall them.

I¹m sorry for any confusion this might have caused.

Thanks.

Mike

*This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
<http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/12/13/information-on-accidental-
posting-of-pre-release-security-updates-for-office-for-mac.aspx>



Anyone from MS care to reply?
I¹ve installed it on my test Macs, and they ³appear² OK, but...

Scott
Click to expand...


--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
 
N

Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.

Mike, I used Office 2004's built-in auto-update application rather than
downloading anything posted at versiontracker. Does that make a difference?
If not, what's the least time-consuming to fix it?

Respectfully, Norm
 
H

henryn

Dr. Nager:

Thanks for your post on this thread:

Nager, Ph.D. at [email protected] wrote on 12/13/06 12:36
PM:
Mike, I used Office 2004's built-in auto-update application rather than
downloading anything posted at versiontracker. Does that make a difference?
If not, what's the least time-consuming to fix it?
Click to expand...

I also used saw the auto-update notice and trustingly said, "Sure, go ahead,
update!"

I've noticed no change at all since then. I've only used Word briefly since
the update, but I use Entourage constantly, and it operates normally
throughout

So, yes, is there a way to back off this update without recreating the
world? Should I try to remove the update if it does not appear to be
broken? Does anyone know about the dynamics of the bad effects people have
seen -- do they show up right away?

Thanks,

Henry

[email protected] remove 'zzz'
 
M

Michel Bintener

Well, I'm not sure if Mike checks these newsgroups. I only quoted his blog
entry.
So, yes, is there a way to back off this update without recreating the
world? Should I try to remove the update if it does not appear to be
broken? Does anyone know about the dynamics of the bad effects people have
seen -- do they show up right away?
Click to expand...

Too soon to tell. The blog entry says that this update was not meant to be
released to the wider public, as it is still in some kind of beta state.
This can mean that some things are broken, or will break at some point. It
can also mean that the beta is stable enough for the everyday use. If I were
you, I'd keep using it if there are no apparent problems. Of course, it is
not known whether the real update, when it comes out, will simply fix the
update or whether you'll be forced to remove and re-install Office at that
point.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
 
H

henryn

Michael Bintener:

Thanks for your post on this thread:

Well, I'm not sure if Mike checks these newsgroups. I only quoted his blog
entry.


Too soon to tell. The blog entry says that this update was not meant to be
released to the wider public, as it is still in some kind of beta state.
This can mean that some things are broken, or will break at some point. It
can also mean that the beta is stable enough for the everyday use. If I were
you, I'd keep using it if there are no apparent problems. Of course, it is
not known whether the real update, when it comes out, will simply fix the
update or whether you'll be forced to remove and re-install Office at that
point.
Click to expand...

Ummmmm, so the situation is clear ... as mud.

Would you pass on to your colleagues "inside" the suggestion that the
company issue a definitive advisory on this subject, so people who depend on
their products --and trusted the MS auto-update process-- might be
reassured. Or advised how to repair defect(s) introduced by this mishap?
Soon would be best. Today would work great.

Thanks,

Henry
 
S

Scott Boettcher

Michael Bintener:

Thanks for your post on this thread:



Ummmmm, so the situation is clear ... as mud.

Would you pass on to your colleagues "inside" the suggestion that the
company issue a definitive advisory on this subject, so people who depend on
their products --and trusted the MS auto-update process-- might be
reassured. Or advised how to repair defect(s) introduced by this mishap?
Soon would be best. Today would work great.

Thanks,

Henry
Click to expand...

Agreed. For MS to essentially hide on this is not very reassuring.
I have a hard enough time in the corporate world supporting Macs, without
having some sort of disaster caused by a bad update.
Fortunately, I would never update a user¹s system until the updates are
tested and out for a few days.

Scott
 
M

Michel Bintener

Ummmmm, so the situation is clear ... as mud.

Would you pass on to your colleagues "inside" the suggestion that the
company issue a definitive advisory on this subject, so people who depend on
their products --and trusted the MS auto-update process-- might be
reassured. Or advised how to repair defect(s) introduced by this mishap?
Soon would be best. Today would work great.
Click to expand...

Hi Henry,

MVPs do not work for Microsoft, so I'm afraid that I do not have any
colleagues "inside". But I'm sure Microsoft is aware of the mistake that has
been made (as the blog entry clearly shows), and I would also expect more
details to become available as soon as the "real" 11.3.1 / 10.1.9 updates
are released. For the time being, you could remove Office using the Remove
Office tool, re-install Office and then apply the 11.3 update, which is the
latest stable release. Then again, you might just want to wait and see if
the beta 11.3.1 update is not working correctly after all.

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
 
N

Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.

This morning, I ran AutoUpdate (Help pulldown menu/"Check for Updates") and
happily discovered that 11.3.2 was available.

I used AutoUpdate without incident. It advanced Entourage from 11.2.5 to
11.3.2. The version numbers of Excel and Word remained at 11.3.

I've spent a few hours putting all three Office 2004 applications through
their paces. Everything's working perfectly on my Dual G5 2.0., running
with OS 10.4.8.

Respectfully, Norm
 
N

Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.

MacFixIt has since reported the availability of an 11.3.2 download, as well
as the AutoUpdate. The MacFixIt article tells what changes 11.3.2 makes--and
doesn't make. Apparently, the Word vulnerabilities that were supposed to
have been patched by by the pulled 11.3.1 update still remain:
<http://www.macfixit.com/index.shtml>

Here's the Microsoft webpage to which the MacFixIt article links:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/down
load/Office2004/Office2004_1132.xml>

One piece of important info on pre-reqs before installation of the download:
Make sure that you've already run the 11.3.0 updater. It's unclear to me
whether/how this applies to running of AutoUpdate. Perhaps, someone can
answer that?

Respectfully, Norm
 
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