Outlook 2007 Feb 2009 Cumulative Update Released – Think “Pre-SP2 Performance and Reliability Update” or “Outlook now shuts down better and is faster update”

Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog - Announcing the February Cumulative Update for Outlook 2007

“The Outlook team is proud to announce the release of the February Cumulative Update for Outlook 2007, a series of performance and reliability improvements that have been consolidated into a single package for our customers. Since the release of Outlook 2007 we have been working hard to improve performance, and this update represents the latest in our continued efforts to build a better experience for Outlook users around the world.

To get started and install the update right away visit the download page. This update contains a significant number of new performance-focused improvements for Outlook users. We especially focused on the areas of starting up and shutting down Outlook, switching between folders with large numbers of messages, calendar reliability and consistency, and general responsiveness of the application when performing common tasks around managing your e-mail, calendar, and other information. In short, we believe your daily experience with Outlook will be greatly improved with the installation of this Cumulative Update.

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Outlook 2007 improvements in the February 2009 cumulative update

“The Microsoft Office Outlook February Cumulative Update (CU) contains a large set of the fixes that release as part of the 2007 Microsoft Office suite Service Pack 2 (SP2). The fix list for the February CU may not be identical to the fix list for SP2, but for the purposes of this article, the February CU fixes are referred to synonymously with the fixes for SP2. Also, when Office suite SP2 releases, there will not be a specific package that targets only Outlook.

Outlook 2007 SP2 is a user-focused update that contains significant improvements in performance and in calendar reliability. This article contains a detailed summary of the improvements in each of these areas.

Note After you successfully install the update, the first time you run Outlook there will be a slight one-time delay as Outlook reprocesses your data files. After this initial process, performance will improve as described in this article and in the whitepaper.

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This pageshot gives a good feel for the scope of stuff in the CU. Yeah, wow, now that’s a ton-o-stuff! I installed this yesterday and so far everything seems to be working fine. Nothing is broken and Outlook’s performance seems good and does seem faster.

Make sure you note the note above, that after installing this hotfix Outlook will take a bit to start the first time. Been there, saw that, got the t-shirt… YMMV