Microsoft October Patch Tuesday Fixes 62 Issues
The October 2017 Patch released this past Tuesday, addresses important security issues including a Word zero-day vulnerability. Users who are not on auto updates should install them immediately.
Security: Microsoft Word Vulnerability
Multiple security companies have reported an exploit in the wild infecting users with the Dridex Trojan. When recipients open the document, the exploit – if successful – is used to carry out a series of actions that lead to the installation of Dridex botnet ID 7500 on the user’s system.
All users should always be extremely careful when opening any attachment in email and should apply the patch expected to be provided by Microsoft tonight.
Microsoft: 14 security bulletins; four critical
Two of the four critical vulnerabilities are for Windows operating systems, one affects the Office. The most severely addressed vulnerability in the Office bulletin could allow Remote Code Execution if a user opens a specially crafted Microsoft office file.
“An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerabilities could run arbitrary code in the context of the current user,” Microsoft wrote. “Customers whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.”
The final critical update is for the Edge web browser in Windows 10, The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Microsoft Edge. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Customers whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.
New features coming to Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft announced this week new features coming soon for Office Online:
Text formatting
Office Online is releasing new autocorrect features. The first implementation will make straightforward changes such as capitalizing the first letter of a sentence. In the coming weeks, you will see more advanced automatic formatting such as transforming two hyphens into a dash—just like you’d expect in Word.
Word Online is also adding the Format Painter, a popular office tool that can streamline document design. Format Painter allows you to copy formatting from the selected content (Ctrl + Shift + C) and paste it onto a different set of content (Ctrl + Shift + V).
Object formatting in PowerPoint Online
Text is great, but illustrations bring your presentation to life. PowerPoint Online’s latest update allows you to make your illustrations look perfect. You can easily select, move, resize and delete objects with your keyboard or mouse. The new Smart Guides feature helps you effortlessly align your objects with other content. Multiselect allows you to format more than one object at a time. You can even move objects outside the slide area while you format other content.
Previously, PowerPoint Online only allowed you to view and relocate existing tables. The latest updates will allow you to create, edit and format your tables in the browser. You can even resize rows or columns.
Easier viewing
We know our customers use Office Online on a wide range of devices. PowerPoint Online’s new full screen Reading View and Zoom tool in the Editing View allow you to have a more comfortable experience on small screen devices. Word Online is also releasing a High DPI experience for viewing PDFs.
Office 2016 Preview for Windows Updated
Customers with the Office preview running in testing will find there is a new build release today:
- Real Time Presence in Word—While Real Time Typing will ship in subsequent builds, Microsoft is rolling out a key part of that collaborative experience with Real Time Presence. Real Time Presence allows you to see where in a document your teammates are editing. Available first for OneDrive for Business subscribers, it will be available more broadly soon.
- Simplified file sharing—Microsoft is simplifying the process of sharing files and making them available to others to review, comment, and edit. Just clicking Share on the Ribbon will save your file to the Cloud and make it available to others in one easy step.
- Insights for Office (currently in Word and Outlook)—Insights, powered by Bing, brings you contextual information from the web right into your reading experience. Try it by selecting keywords, like people or places, in your content and watch as Insights pulls relevant information into the Task pane to help you learn more.
- Version History improvements—It is now easier to find different versions of files stored on SharePoint or OneDrive for Business. You can click the History command in the File menu to view or restore any previous version.
The Office 2016 Preview is available for download for Office 365 users and to anyone has signed up to the preview program.
Office 2016 Preview widely available
Available in a VERY early form previously the Office 2016 Preview is now available to anyone wishing to test it. Both Office 365 and on premises Office users can test the new versions of Word, Excel, Outlook etc.
Of course this software should not used in your production environment, but it is a stable release and suitable for use in most test environments.
Source: Microsoft
Office Online adds Dropbox support
In November of 2014 Microsoft and Dropbox announced they were integrating Office and Dropbox. Initially this allowed users of Office Mobile to open and save Office documents from their Dropbox accounts. Missing at the time was support for accessing those documents without or while away from a Microsoft Office client.
This week Microsoft has announced Dropbox integration for Office Online. Now you can access your Dropbox files from any web browser and edit them in Office.
Office 2016 Preview for Mac updated
Microsoft has released a significant update to the Office 2016 Preview available for Mac. Since its release the preview has become quote stable, allowing users to use a modern version of Office without Windows. The updated includes changes to Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
If you have not downloaded the preview we recommend trying out:
Source: Office Preview for Mac
OneNote Clipper 2.0 with improved interface and location picker
OneNote Clipper is a browser toolbar button that lets you clip anything you see on the web: articles, images etc. and save them to OneNote. Once the toolbar / shortcut has been saved to your favorites bad you can click it to activate OneNote Clipper and select what you wish to save and save it to your choice of notebooks.
New in version 2.0 is a redesigned interface which takes up less space than the previous version and is easier to use.
The location picker now allows you save specific locations of a page, allowing you to only save what you need.
OneNote 2.0 also now remembers the last notebook you were in, so you no longer have to browse if you plan to save multiple pages or clips to the same notebook.
Source: OneNote Clipper
Source: OneNote Download
Microsoft Office 2016 Preview for Mac available
Mac users have always been running a version or so behind. With the recent release of Office 2016 Preview for Windows the rumors were that a version for Mac was being developed and Office 2016 would finally bring the two platforms in sync.
Today Microsoft has released the Office 2016 Preview for Mac. Office 2016 for Mac includes new versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. While we have not had a chance to test these applications, this like the Windows preview should not be used in a production environment.
Source: Microsoft
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