Microsoft updates Office 2011 and 2008 with a host of Outlook and other fixes

If you haven't seen it already, sometime in the next few days you'll get a software update for Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 and 2011.

The update has security patches that Microsoft deems "critical" and improvements to Outlook. The update requires a Mac running OS X 10.5.8 or later. Some Macs will need multiple updates because this is not a single patch.

Here are the details of the updates:

• This update fixes an issue in which automatic configuration did not work correctly for Outlook.com accounts.

• This update addresses an issue when importing data from a PST file. If an email message in the PST file contains inline images followed by attachments (in that order), the attachments will be missing from the message after it is imported in Outlook for Mac.

• This update fixes an issue in which certain kinds of distribution lists were not being recognized correctly as distribution lists and could not be expanded.

• This update addresses an issue when you use a Gmail account in Mac Outlook 2011 14.2 and later versions. When you move a message between folders, a duplicate of it was incorrectly created in the All Mails folder.

• This update addresses an issue in which spaces sometimes disappear when pasting content from Word or replying to messages generated in windows Outlook (which uses WordMail as editor). The issue was caused by incorrect parsing of the copied content in Outlook for Mac.

• This update adds a designated error to inform users when an expired password results in authentication failure. Previously, users were not provided this level of detail when an authentication failure occurred.