Microsoft Releases Office 2003 Beta 2 Refresh

The long awaited refresh build of Office 2003 Beta 2 has been released to approximately 15,000 technical beta testers via BetaPlace. The update makes a number of improvements to the second beta and comes in the form of individual patches for each Office System application.

Microsoft chose to make a smaller initial release in order to evaluate the best method for distributing the refresh code to the over 600,000 Office 2003 beta users. The patches will eventually be available via Office Update for all users to download.

"Before making the patches available via Microsoft Office Online to everyone, the patches will be made available for download from www.betaplace.com for you folks," wrote Microsoft beta coordinator Sloan Crayton in a newsgroup posting. "Making this change means that the Office Update mechanism that I've been discussing with you folks will not be used in the initial availability."

The Beta 2 Technical Refresh includes patches for Office 2003, Publisher, FrontPage, OneNote and InfoPath. Microsoft has issued a new version of Visio 2003 as part of the refresh, the first such build available to Office beta testers. "A new newsgroup node has also been created in the o11oep newsgroup tree for Visio related issues," Microsoft said.

Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2003, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and Windows SharePoint Services have additionally been updated and will be available to testers as "full file downloads."

Although the Beta 2 refresh was not part of the initial Office roadmap, Redmond officials continue to maintain that Office System 2003 will be complete by late summer. Microsoft has yet to announce a firm ship date, however, and the company has remained mum on pricing details.