Office for Mac 2011 SP2 update creating database issues for some Outlook users

Microsoft introduced Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 2 about a week ago, and according to the company, the "majority of our customers have been delighted with the improvements." However, some not so much, particularly Outlook users. So the other day, Microsoft said it had stopped pushing the update through its AutoUpdate client.

Our goal is provide the simplest update experience for everyone – so we have temporarily stopped pushing out the SP2 update through Microsoft AutoUpdate while we investigate the issue. Customers are still able to obtain the SP2 update via the Microsoft Downloads site by clicking here. We encourage you to either wait for the AutoUpdate, or follow the directions in the above blog post before manually updating to ensure you don’t experience issues. We will provide an update once we have more information to share.

Some five days after the release, Microsoft officially noted the problem on its Office For Mac blog. It warned Outlook customers to rebuild the Outlook for Mac 2011 database file and offered a workaround for folks who had already upgraded.

The Office 2011 SP2 release improves database resiliency and detects inconsistencies that went unnoticed prior to this release; however some users have experienced issues related to corrupted databases after the latest updates. We have support and workarounds available for you in the following situations:

The hold on AutoUpdate happened a few days later. A reader of the Office For Mac blog, Don Montalvo, was grateful for the hold.

Thanks for pulling this updater from Auto Update. It makes it a lot easier for us supporting thousands of Macs where the users have admin rights.

Um, thanks for something?