Microsoft KB Archive/214811

= OFF98: Contents of the Combined Updater for Office 98 Read Me =

Article ID: 214811

Article Last Modified on 10/2/2002

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office 98 for Macintosh

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This article was previously published under Q214811



SUMMARY
The Combined Updater for Microsoft Office 98 contains a Read Me file describing the changes made by the updater. This article lists the contents of the Read Me file.

Note: The Read Me file incorrectly refers to the updater as the "Microsoft Office 98 Updater."

Note: An updated version of the Combined Updater for Office 98 was made available in March 1999.



MORE INFORMATION
--- MICROSOFT OFFICE 98 UPDATER INSTALLATION README FILE MARCH 1999 ---

(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:

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

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

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

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.
 * In addition, Microsoft has discovered an isolated issue with Word 98 when

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:

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.
 * If you do not have a copy of the file "Microsoft Office 98" on your

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.
 * It is not possible to directly update Office 98 if it is located on a

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.
 * If you have multiple copies of the files the updater is trying to patch,

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  for the version of the Microsoft Office 98 Updater that matches your copy of Microsoft Office 98.
 * This copy of Microsoft Updater is designed to work only with the English

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.
 * This patch will work on all installations of the English language version

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

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

Additional query words: OFF98 patch megapatch

Keywords: kbinfo kbreadme KB214811

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