Mac users of Microsoft's Office 2008 suite of applications should be glad to hear that the company behind the Windows operating system has updated Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac to version 12.1.1. According to Microsoft, the update contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance.

A closer look at Microsoft's latest update for Mac users of its office app suite reveals that it fixes charting problems, Entourage crashing when the computer wakes from sleep and Open XML converting issues.

"This update fixes an issue that causes Office 2008 applications to exit unexpectedly when you open or use Office 2008 applications," Microsoft says, adding that "an issue that causes the dates in a chart to change unexpectedly when you open a Word 2008 document or a PowerPoint 2008 presentation that contains a chart" has also been dealt with.

Improvements for Word, Excel and Entourage are detailed over at Microsoft's Knowledge Base page.

Before you install the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update, make sure that the computer is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system. Click "About This Mac" on the Apple menu to see if your system meets this prerequisite. You must also ensure that the Microsoft Office 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Update (12.1.0) is installed on the computer before you proceed with installing the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update.

To verify that the Office 2008 SP1 Update (12.1.0) is installed, follow these steps:

1 - Go menu --> Applications
2 - open the Microsoft Office 2008 folder
3 - open any Office application
3 - Word menu --> About Word
4 - in the About Word dialog box the version number is displayed next to Latest Installed Update.

Click HERE to download the Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.1 update (available in 11 languages). The package is 153MB in size.