Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Francis — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 01:46:16 GMT

How exciting!!! I am installing as 'we' speak. :-)

Apropos patching--I always thought patching was used to reduce the size of downloads. Yet the B2TR download is 495 MB. I take it possible future service packs will be smaller?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Ali — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 01:57:01 GMT

The patch is almost the same size as the original distribution. How strange!

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

jensenh — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:05:22 GMT

Francis, Ali:

It's so big because nearly every file in Office changed between Beta 2 and B2TR.

The average update patch contains a few lines of updated code... not five months of work by hundreds of developers! :)

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

James — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:11:51 GMT

The patching is broken: it set Outlook to be the default mail client and created icons everywhere (again!).

Actually, running Outlook as a non-admin user also seems to register the mailto protocol under HKCU\Software\Classes instead of HKLM\S\C, which is especially annoying since the other applications don't think to change that (not OE, not Thunderbird, not Set Program Access and Defaults...). It's so frustrating.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Josh Einstein — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 02:14:58 GMT

Everything worked (unfortunately, like a sucker though I paid to download Beta 2 thinking it was the tech refresh even though I was already a registered beta user)

But I can't seem to find a Tech Refresh for Business Contact Manager and it refuses to run in Outlook B2TR.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Jeff — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 03:02:27 GMT

Hi Jensen -

B2TR works for me. Quick question: I noticed that in the outlook message compose window, the Send button has moved off the ribbon and is now left of the addressing section of the message. Can you share the thinking on that change? My spinal macros have trained me that actions such as "Reply", "Forward", "Accept Meeting", etc. are on the top-left of the Ribbon. I find myself clicking on the greyed out "Paste" button and then saying, "Shoot, I need to aim lower - they moved the Send button"

Thanks!

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Steve — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 04:11:59 GMT

I'm new to the Office beta program. I got the Beta 2 download, and the B2TR download. I want to install on Vista RC1.

Should I just install B2, then immediately (without trying anything out, etc.) install B2TR? I've heard the B2 and Vista RC1 don't get along, but will it at least install enough to get the B2TR on there?

Thanks!

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

jensenh — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 04:35:26 GMT

Jeff,

I'll post about this soon. Very briefly: it's so that you can send regardless of what tab you're on or if the Ribbon is minimized or not.

After two days or so, you'll be totally used to it and glad it's there. (That seems to be how long it took for me to get used to the change.)

In the final product, the vast majority of people won't have ever used Beta 2, so won't have the transition period.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

jensenh — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 04:35:52 GMT

Folks:

If the patch seems to have failed, try following the instructions here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923718

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 04:43:01 GMT

I am keeping a list of problems with fixes for B2TR at http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/43. You should read this post BEFORE installing B2TR, as there are some critical issues involving files created in Beta 2.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Aaron — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:46:39 GMT

Will we be seeing full Vista type icons for the file types in the final release? By this I mean that the file type do not display larger than 48x48 icons.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

gary k — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:57:18 GMT

well, i'm not too happy about the upgrade installation path of beta 2. it sees i have o2k3 installed and suggests upgrade. to me, upgrade means upgrade, not install everything, including apps i never had installed.

i never had outlook installed, and i never want outlook installed, but an upgrade itnstalled it.

this is wrong.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

gary k — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 06:01:27 GMT

and one other thing, while i'm at it. i thought i read in this blog, or it could have been the excel blog, that in this day and age all dialogs should be resizeable. well, what happened to the change dialog in the add remove features? doesn't appear to be resizeable to me.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Phil Wright — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:20:37 GMT

Every since installing the B2TR, Office Word 2007 will not open any files of any type!!

I always get....

'The file Example.txt is not available.'

With the filename being whatever I try and open. Even saving a new file of type .txt cannot be opened again using Word. I have tried rebooting and it makes no different.

Environment: XP SP2

Any ideas?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:29:29 GMT

Phil: from the known issues list:
Office has an anti-virus API which we call every time we load a file. In 2007 Microsoft Office a change was made to support scanning encrypted macros. In making this change, we inadvertently changed the size of a data structure in the conversation, and Symantec's Norton scanner returns an error saying this was unexpected.

We treat ANY error from the scanner as a critical failure and block opening files. Unfortunately we do that in ALL cases where the scanner is called. In short with 2007 Office Beta 2 Technical Refresh and Norton Antivirus (any version) the user cannot open any files in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access and Project. The user receives an error of File failed to open, File not found, etc.
Resolution:
We currently only see this with the Symantec's Consumer Norton AV product. Most corporate deployments do not use this plug-in. We are also checking other scanners to see if they are affected.

In the Norton case the best option is to disable the Office plug-in.

See Method 2: in the following KB for guidance on how to do that: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329820/en-us
----------
Phil, please let us know if this is the issue you are having and whether the resolution helps you.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

John Smulo — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:06:13 GMT

I had the same problem as Phil above with Word not opening. That was a scary problem to have. But I used the Method 2 link above and I can use Word fine.

Thanks,

John

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Benny Christen Grandahl — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:46:25 GMT

Hi Jensen

Downloaded it as soon as it was released and am thrilled about the new stuff - and it is a more stable animal also.

Danes can read my first impressions on my blog - just follow the link.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Phil Wright — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 09:51:32 GMT

Patrick Schmid,

Thanks for the information, I disabled the Office Add-In for Norton 2005 and after a reboot everything works fine again. Thanks for the speedy response.

arturogoga » Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

arturogoga » Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:07:18 GMT

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Office 2007 Beta 2 - Refresh now available

Nick Whittome - "The Naked MVP" — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:02:33 GMT

If you are running Office 2007 Beta, then be sure to download the beta 2 refresh that was released today.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh _ PROBLEMS with BCM

Markus S — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:12:47 GMT

Office 2007 Beta 2 TR works fine on my pc. Installation took some time but in the end it works until BCM (Business Contact Manager) the Old one doesn't work neither did Outlook. Try to deinstall the old BCM.

Is there a BCM Beta 2 TR anywhere? If one had the link it would be very nice. I like the tool and it works really fine in the Original Beta2.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Markus S — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:46:44 GMT

Due to my personell research about Beta 2 Technical Refresh i found out a search string for maybe all Beta2 TR included my missed BCM ;)
so here it is:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=9&freetext=office%202007%20technical%20refresh&DisplayLang=en

have a nice try and certainly day ;)

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Critter — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:51:36 GMT

Alas, I am disappointed with the patch. It did not fix the errors I was getting with Outlook.

Everything was running fine for a while, then outlook started crashing as soon as I would open it. I had hoped wiping it off and re-installing it would sort the problem. It did not. So I went back to 2003.

Even after clean installing the beta2 and TR outlook still throws an immediate error. *sigh* guess I'll wait for RC1 :)

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

lstrite — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:20:06 GMT

Jensen, you noted yesterday that "A full list of new features and improvements to the entire product (not just the user interface) will be available along with the download tomorrow."

Will you post that soon? Keenly interested to learn about all the features that have been updated (both UI and functional).

Thanks in advance...:]

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:57:16 GMT

Critter,
does it crash if you open it with Start, Run, "outlook /safe"?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Jim Rech — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:42:51 GMT

>>I've also posted a list of Ribbon Control IDs for use with B2TR for RibbonX developers.

77 duplicates in the Excel list, Jensen (excluding the Ordering column of course). Not that I'm not grateful for this!

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

mentas — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 17:04:32 GMT

Powerpoint can't read...
Word can't read...
... can't read...

"The presentation cannot be opened. Your antivirus program may prevent you from opening the presentation. To fix this problem, make sure your antivirus program is current and working correctly. If the problem persists and the presentation is from someone that you trust, turn off your antivirus program, and then try to open the presentation again. If you do this, make sure you turn on your antivirus program again after you open the presentation."

I have Norton Antivirus.

I hate antivirus!!!

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Jeff — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:08:55 GMT

Thanks to Microsoft for fixing the links problem in plain-text emails! I was missing being able to click on links.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Adam — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:43:39 GMT

"Why a patch instead of a full release? Primarily because we need to test the patching technology broadly, and this is a great chance to make sure it works well."

Hang on ... what do you mean "test the patching technology"?

Isn't the patching technology part of Windows Installer? If so, why aren't the Windows Installer team testing the patching technology? If not, does this mean that the Office team have rolled their own version of an existing MS technology (again!)?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:47:08 GMT

Adam,

Windows Installer is just the underlying technology. MS can easily make mistakes when using that technology. Hence they need to test it. None of us wants something going wrong with Office 2007 Service Packs.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

ChadB — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 02:21:24 GMT

Ok, so i went off and excitedly downloaded the B2TR after much anticipation and waiting for it to be releated the public. Yet when i actually try run the file, it seems to run and then nothing happens.

I've followed the instructions given in: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923718

And i still don't even seem to be able to run the file! What am I missing here...?

I also checked the running processes as i execute the file, and it launches a process, which after a few seconds terminates. Can anyone offer some advice... or guidance?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 13:35:13 GMT

Hi Jensen,
I actually liked my electrocuted printer :) Any chance the icon can be available in the final product as alternative to the one that is there now?

My homepage

Alan — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:23:11 GMT

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My homepage

Jill — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:23:15 GMT

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My homepage

Troy — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:23:20 GMT

Thank you!
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re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

GregM — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 05:40:30 GMT

"Actually, running Outlook as a non-admin user also seems to register the mailto protocol under HKCU\Software\Classes instead of HKLM\S\C, which is especially annoying since the other applications don't think to change that (not OE, not Thunderbird, not Set Program Access and Defaults...). It's so frustrating. "

James, that's the absolutely correct behavior for a non-admin user. HKCR is a merger of HKLM\S\C and HKCU\S\C. If the HKCU key exists, then the write to HKCR goes to HKCU, otherwise it goes to HKLM. So, once Office writes to HKCU, then the other programs that write to HCKR will write there too. If they're writing to HKLM directly, then they're broken.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:38:20 GMT

Great patch! Not for its Guinness Book size <g>, but because it is so much stable, until now I didn’t experience any GPF. Congratulations!

Unfortunately, maybe fortunately for others, the installation didn’t restore default options. Now I can’t remember what is default or customized. It would be best if there is a default button in each dialog to restore shipped options.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Vaibhav Garg — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:19:06 GMT

I have an issue regarding Word changes in the b2tr.
I can not change text direction in text boxes anymore. I just tried it in beta2 and it works seemlessly. But in b2tr, the button is disabled no matter what. So is the button to rotate the text box which worked fine in beta2.
I dont know if this is the right place to ask, but could anybody help me in this regard? Is anyone else experiencing the same issue?
Thanks for you help.

Windows Observer » Blog Archive » In and Around the Net - Going to Sea Edition

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re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Joe — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:08:22 GMT

The download page seems to have been removed?

"We’re sorry, but there is no Microsoft.com Web page that matches your entry."

Waterfall Web » Quick Links for 21 September

Waterfall Web » Quick Links for 21 September — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:28:50 GMT

PingBack from http://www.waterfallweb.net/archives/2006/01/quick-links-for-21-september/

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Hastings — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 02:08:59 GMT

Dear Jeff,

Disaster of disaters. I loaded the Tech refresh and now am unable to open any of my office document files in any suite( error, Files not available ) although all the office beta programs work individualy. What have I done incorrectly?

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Patrick Schmid — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 03:24:44 GMT

Hastings: follow the steps under "file not found" on my b2tr page at http://pschmid.net

Patrick

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Lokesh — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 11:48:04 GMT

Teried the steps http://pschmid.net but alas it does not work for me -- Does not open any file old or new

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Shawn — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 03:16:28 GMT

Doesn't work still. I uninstalled Norton.

On top of that I can't open half my old Powerpoint files.

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

ife — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 23:18:21 GMT

I am having the same problem too. Unable to open old files in word, excel, etc

re: Beta 2 Technical Refresh Available Now

Richard — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 23:39:54 GMT

I am having a really horrible time trying to get the Beta 2 Technical Refresh to install.I have saved it to disk and have tried Patrick Schmids few ideas and they dont work.I have installed Vista Rc 1 and have the Microsoft Office Pro-Plus 2007 and the trouble is with my Outlook and its the Beta 2 one.Can you help?

Really I want to use all the features that are up to date and my Diagnostic test says Beta installation is out of date.

I really dont know who to ask anymore,from the Office discussion forum I really havent seen any kind of solution, just people with a lot of troubles with the Refresh.

Malcolm Gin’s SharePoint and .NET Tips » Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR) and the “The file is not available.” error.

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 04:38:18 GMT

PingBack from http://www.malcolmgin.com/msblog/?p=20

re: Beta 2 TR Available Now / Norton AV 2005 plug-in / Office XP

Steve Camilleri — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:39:58 GMT

WinXPSP2 with OfficeXP SP3 also installed.

Install went well at first, but having problems with the NAV2006 Office Plug-in, which I now disabled. Had a few random crashes in Word & Excel. Then ran the Microsoft Office Diagnostics which threw up some errors in Setup Diagnostic — File corruption or altered file. Fixed successfuly & B2TR now runs ok.

Looking forward to NAV2006 office plug-in update :)

Everytime i click on the OfficeXP icons windows installer kicks in (at first asking for install disk, but then in later runs doesn't). Otehrwise behaves normally so i'mn assuming this is the expected behaviour.

Thanks

Steve

The Office 2007 UI Bible | MS Tech News

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