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Microsoft plans to release before the end of the year the third and likely final service pack (SP) for Office 2007 before the product exists mainstream support in April 2012.

(Given Microsoft is referring to SP3 as the “October 2011 release,” I’m thinking it probably will be out this month.)

“Service Pack 3 contains a roll-up of all 2007 Cumulative and Public Updates since Service Pack 2 for both Office client suites and applications as well as SharePoint Servers, in addition to some new fixes for issues discovered during the lifecycle of SP2,” according to an October 6 post on the Microsoft Office Updates blog. Users who are up-to-date with Automatic Updates for Office 2007 already have installed most of what’s coming in SP3, Microsoft officials said. Read more »

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DelBene also indicated that businesses should expect the next version of Office to start selling at the end of 2012.

“We’re typically in a 2 1/2 year cycle,” DelBene said Tuesday. Office 2010 started selling in June 2010, so that would make the next version of Office ready around December 2012.

The new cloud service Office 365 will get quarterly software updates. Unlike most online banking websites, Office 365 will not go down for hours at a time for the software upgrade. “That’s maddening,” DelBene said. Read more »