OFF98: Contents of the Combined Updater for Office 98 Read Me (214811)

MORE INFORMATION

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     MICROSOFT OFFICE 98 UPDATER
     INSTALLATION README FILE
           MARCH 1999
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(c) 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This Microsoft Office 98 Updater is a combination of the previously 
released "Unwanted Data" updater, the "Mac OS 8.5" updater, and the "Unique 
Identifier" updater. Each of those updaters is still available on the 
Microsoft Office 98 web page and can be run individually. 

If you run the updaters individually you must run the "Unwanted Data" 
updater first, then the "Mac OS 8.5" updater, and finally the "Unique 
Identifier" updater. Running them in a different order will cause errors.


This updater addresses several issues: 

There is a privacy concern in Office 98 regarding the insertion of a unique 
identifier number in Office 98 documents. Once applied, this patch prevents
Office 98 applications from inserting a unique identifier number into 
Office documents. 

There is a security issue in Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition caused 
by the way Office 98 allocates space on the disk for file storage. The Mac 
OS - like many other OS' file systems - does not erase files when you 
delete them; it simply removes the reference to them and marks the space 
they occupied as "free." Office 98 does not initialize disk space the Mac 
OS allocates for a File Save operation; therefore, a small amount of unused 
space in the file may contain random data from previously deleted files. 
While the data cannot be viewed when opened as a native Office file, it can 
be viewed using an ASCII text editor. 

This Updater changes the behavior of Microsoft Office and OLE to initialize 
the disk space before saving to it, thereby erasing any extraneous data.

This updater addresses several issues that can affect Office 98 users who 
install Apple's Mac OS 8.5 upgrade. These are:

* Menus drop down slowly and display a white background color instead of 
  native platinum.

* Word 98 documents that use certain fonts may paginate or lay out 
  differently after upgrading to OS 8.5.

* The euro currency symbol is not available in Office 98 applications even 
  though OS 8.5 supports creating, displaying and printing it.

* In addition, Microsoft has discovered an isolated issue with Word 98 when 
  Fast Save is enabled.  Editing long documents that contain multiple 
  floating images could potentially change text in the document into 
  unreadable or incorrect characters, such as the "0" character.  This 
  issue can affect users on any version of the Mac OS.

Also included in this updater is the update to the file "Visual Basic for 
Applications", previously made available to address the Memo Wizard/G3 
issue.

The Microsoft Office 98 Updater updates your copy of Microsoft Office 98 in 
two steps. The first step updates the files listed above.  The second step 
runs the new "Microsoft Office First Run" file, which then copies the new 
"Microsoft OLE Library," "Microsoft Structured Storage," and "Microsoft 
Component Library" files to your Extensions folder.

The following files are updated:
* Microsoft Office First Run
* Visual Basic for Applications
* Microsoft PowerPoint
* PP Translator 8-4
* Microsoft Office 98
* Microsoft Word

Important notes about this Updater:

* If you do not have a copy of the file "Microsoft Office 98" on your 
  target machine, you will be instructed to quit the updater. "Microsoft 
  Office 98" is required for any Office application to boot. If it is not 
  found, the updater assumes you do not have Office 98 installed and 
  therefore no update is necessary.

* It is not possible to directly update Office 98 if it is located on a 
  network volume.  You must run the Updater on a copy of Office 98 located 
  on a local disk, and then copy the updated version to your network 
  volume.

* If you have multiple copies of the files the updater is trying to patch, 
  you will be asked to choose which copy you want modified. You can run the 
  Updater multiple times if you want to patch more than one copy of these 
  files.

* This copy of Microsoft Updater is designed to work only with the English 
  language version of Microsoft Office 98. If you try to run this patch 
  against other language versions, you will receive errors and your files 
  will not be properly updated. Check the Microsoft Office 98 web page at
  <http://www.microsoft.com/macoffice> for the version of the Microsoft 
  Office 98 Updater that matches your copy of Microsoft Office 98.

* This patch will work on all installations of the English language version 
  of Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition, even installations which 
  include only a subset of the patchable files. If any of the application 
  files are not found, the patching process will continue without error.

* We recommend you close other running applications before running this 
  Updater.

* New files created after this Updater has been applied will not contain
  extraneous data. Follow these steps to "clean" old files of any 
  extraneous data they might contain:

  1. Open the file.
  2. For Word documents only, choose Word Count from the Tools menu.  Click
     the Close button when the word count is finished.
  3. Choose Save As from the File menu
  4. Click the Save button.  When prompted, choose to Replace the existing 
     file.
  5. Choose Close from the File menu.