Microsoft Office 2007 can be downloads as a free update from OfficeOnline and the Redmond company plans to releases it as an automatic update in the next threee to six months.

According to the company’s website the 2007 Microsoft Office suites Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains significant security improvements, stability improvements, and performance improvements. Also some fixes that are included with the 2007 Microsoft Office suites SP1 were previously released in separate updates.

The 2007 Microsoft Office SP1 combines the previously released fixes into one update, stated Microsoft on its website.

Microsoft explained that using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, the developers fixed, at minimum, the five software bugs that most frequently caused each application in the 2007 Office system to crash. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and compatibility with Windows Server 2008.

The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications that are pervasive in modern offices, most notably: Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Microsoft claims.

For example, thanks to the new Service Pack users can now open and edit embedded objects that contain other embedded objects, with Office Word 2007

When using smart documents in Office Word 2007, the Document Actions task pane no longer disappears when moving the pointer into the Reviewing pane. Additionally, task panes opened earlier no longer appear unexpectedly.

Microsoft also said Office PowerPoint 2007 no longer crashes when the user programmatically accesses the parent property of the Hyperlinks Collection Object in the Office PowerPoint 2007 object model.

Users can now open presentations in Office PowerPoint 2007 from e-mail attachments in Office Outlook Web Access.

Also Office Outlook 2007 no longer closes unexpectedly when the junk e-mail rule is set to null and body content in HTML-formatted e-mail messages now appears properly in the preview pane or when the message is opened.

In search folders, Office Outlook 2007 now shows the accurate count for unread items that are hidden.

All the examples above are just some of the fixes delivered through the Service Pack 1.

The Service Pack 1 can be considered as an early release, because Microsoft previously announced the new software update will be unveiled in early 2008,

According to Reed Shaffner, Microsoft Office product manager the company finished updating the software sooner than it expected.

"We're optimistic that with the shipment of SP1 we're removing any residual barriers that may have impeded deployment and that adoption will only accelerate," wrote Shaffner, on its Web site.

Still Microsoft didn’t released any specific details about the security improvements.

"SP1 provides stability and performance improvements across the 2007 Office system, keying in on customers' leading productivity concerns, and beefs up security precautions to stay ahead of the latest threats from malicious software and other risks," Shaffner noted.

Microsoft hopes that the new Service Pack will speed up the adoption process of Office 2007 among the business users.