December Office 2007 Update Riddled with Problems

Microsoft has pulled the latest update it released for Outlook 2007 from Microsoft Update citing a range of issues affecting customers.

The company apologized to anyone affected, noting that it’s working to resolve all the issues and that will provide the refresh again when it meets quality standards.

KB2412171 for Outlook 2007 was offered initially on December 14, and served to customers just for a couple of days, with delivery being discontinued on December 16.

Since the update was distributed automatically to all users with Outlook 2007 installed that also had Automatic Updates enabled, the software giant is noting that quite a lot of customers are affected.

If KB2412171 has been installed as late as December 16 on your machine, then you’re bound to run into some issues with your email client.

According to the Redmond company, there are three main problems which have already been identified.

“- Outlook fails to connect if Secure Password Authentication (SPA) is configured for an account and the mail server does not support SPA.

This is important for Google Gmail users because Gmail does not support SPA. Outlook customers using Gmail who have the SPA option turned on cannot connect to Gmail.

- Noticeable performance issues are experienced when switching between folders if you do not have a Microsoft Exchange Server account configured in Outlook.

Switching folders might take several seconds depending on the performance of your computer.

This issue only applies when you use an IMAP, POP3, or Outlook Live Connector account, such as Windows Live Hotmail, and do not have an Exchange Server account configured in the same Outlook profile.

- AutoArchive cannot be configured for IMAP, POP3, or Outlook Live Connector accounts if there is no Exchange Server account configured in the same Outlook profile. If you previously configured AutoArchive, no additional items are archived.”

At the time of this article Microsoft had yet to provide a fix, or to offer a refreshed version of the update, minus all the issues noted above.

However, customers do have a temporary workaround, namely uninstalling KB2412171 from their machine, a move which should solve the issues introduced by the update.