From time to time, Microsoft publishes software updates to improve application security, performance, and reliability. There are two ways to receive updates for Office 2008 for Mac:
Automatically
You can use Microsoft AutoUpdate for Mac to look for updates to your Office 2008 software. By default, AutoUpdate is set to look for updates automatically once per week.
Manually
You can find updates and service packs for Office 2008 on the Downloads
page of the Microsoft Web site (www.microsoft.com/mac).
Deploying updates from a central location
If your policies do not allow users to have administrator privileges on their computers, or if you want to centrally manage updates in order to ensure a common software environment for your users, you can choose the updates that you want to use and deploy them from a central location. This distributes updates to the appropriate users' computers and ensures that your existing installations have the latest software updates.
You can set a preference to disable automatic update checking on users' computers. For more information, see Configuring AutoUpdate for Office 2008 in the Office 2008 Deployment section.
NoteThere is no way to prevent a user who has an administrator account from independently downloading updates from the Microsoft Web site or from overriding your deployed preferences and using AutoUpdate.
For procedural information about deploying updates centrally, see Distributing Office 2008 product updates in the Office 2008 Operation section.
Allowing users to perform updates independently
If you are not planning to deploy Office 2008 updates centrally, you can instruct users to use AutoUpdate. To run AutoUpdate, the user opens any Office 2008 application and then on the Help menu, clicks Check for Updates. Running AutoUpdate requires that the user log in as an administrator.
