McGimpsey & Associates : MacOffice : Office v.X versions

Office v.X versions

Finding out which version of Office you have, including which updates you've applied, can be slightly confusing. MS has released a number of updaters, but not all of them affect every application or file, so, for instance, with Updater 10.1.5, Excel is at version 10.1.5, but because there were no changes made to Word, the Word version is still 10.1.4.

Note: With Updater 10.1.6, Entourage, Excel, Word and Powerpoint are all now at version 10.1.6.

Which version do I have?

You can always tell the latest version you've updated to by selecting the Microsoft Component Plugin file in the Applications:Microsoft Office X:Office folder, and choosing File/Get Info...

Updates

The original version of Office v.X was 10.0.0. MS released several updates, including the major Service Release 1, and combined them in Update 10.1.2. Since then, Updates 10.1.3, 10.1.4, 10.1.5, and 10.1.6 have been released. Update 10.1.3 is not necessary since it's included in Update 10.1.4.

Update 10.1.6 contains all previous updates. Therefore it can be applied to any v.X version, and will update the major applications to version 10.1.6.

If you have the original 10.0.0 version and you wish to update it to something less than 10.1.6, apply Updates 10.1.2, 10.1.4, and 10.1.5 as desired. Note that current shipments may have already had updates applied. Check the Microsoft Component Plugin to see if you need to apply an early update. Each update contains a listing of which components are affected and their respective versions.

You may download updates from MacTopia downloads.

Update Order

Update 10.1.6 may be applied to any previous version and will apply all the updates appropriately. To update to something less than 10.1.6, you must apply the updates in order. In other words, to apply Update 10.1.5, Updates 10.1.2 and 10.1.4 must already be applied, either by you, or as shipped, in that order. To apply Update 10.1.4, you must have first applied Update 10.1.2.

Major Office component version numbers

Each installer comes with a list of files that it updates. Here are the major applications' version numbers for each update. A complete list of each file updated comes in the Readme that each Updater displays during the update process:

Component                          Update 10.1.2  Update 10.1.4  Update 10.1.5  Update 10.1.6

 Entourage                             10.1.1         10.1.4         10.1.4        10.1.6
 Excel                                 10.1.0         10.1.4         10.1.5        10.1.6
 Powerpoint                            10.1.0         10.1.4         10.1.5        10.1.6
 Word                                  10.1.1         10.1.4         10.1.4        10.1.6
 Microsoft Component Plugin            10.1.2         10.1.4         10.1.5        10.1.6
 Visual Basic for Applications         10.1.0         10.1.4         10.1.5        10.1.6

Updates and repairing permissions

OS X is a Unix-based operating system and has a far greater usage of and dependency on file permissions being set correctly for proper operation. I recommend that you repair disk permissions, at a minimum, after performing one or more updates. Failure to have correctly set permissions could result in the failure of an updater to update a file, so if you haven't repaired permissions lately, doing so before applying the update(s) makes sense as well.

To repair permissions:

OS 10.2.x or OS 10.3.x: Run the Disk Utility (in the .:Applications:Utilities folder). From the First Aid tab, click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

OS 10.1.5: Run Repair Privileges (same folder, or download from Apple)

This page last updated on Thursday, 14 October 2004

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