Microsoft Access and Office 2010 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Enhancements and Issues

Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Office 2010. If your PC has automated updates, it may already be installed. If not, you can download it from here.

Here's a Microsoft blog introducing this update entitled Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 2 Availability. According to Microsoft:

The SP2 release improves the compatibility of the Office and SharePoint 2010 products with Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2013, and SharePoint 2013. It also addresses security, stability, and performance and contains all the Cumulative Updates (CU) and Public Updates (PU) that have released since SP1, starting with the June 2011 CU and July 2011 PU and ending with the April 2013 CU and May 2013 PU.

Updated Products

These are the updated products:

• Access 2010 Runtime SP2
• Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP SP2
• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint SP2
• Groove Server 2010 SP2
• Office 2010 Filter Pack SP2
• Office 2010 Language Pack SP2
• Office 2010 SP2 (includes enhancements to Access, Excel, Outlook, and Word)
• Office Language Interface Pack 2010 SP2
• Office Proofing Tools 2010 SP2
• Office Web Apps 2010 SP2
• PowerPoint Viewer SP2
• Project 2010 SP2
• Project Server 2010 SP2
• Search Server 2010 SP2
• Server Language Pack SP2
• SharePoint 2010 Indexing Connector for Documentum SP2
• SharePoint Designer 2010 SP2
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 Client Object Model Redistributable SP2
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Pack SP2
• SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP2
• SharePoint Server 2010 SP2
• Visio 2010 SP2
• Visio Viewer 2010 SP2

Complete List of Office 2010 Enhancements

A complete list of the specific enhancements for each Microsoft Office product is in this spreadsheet from Microsoft.

Microsoft Access Enhancements and Fixes

This is the list of updates for Microsoft Access:

Microsoft Access Object Issues

• If you create an Access query that uses a blank name for a query parameter, Access may crash when running the query.
• In certain cases, the subform footer control in Access does not stay anchored to bottom of a subform.
• Choosing a one-to-many or a many-to one-relationship in the Access Relationship dialog does not always dismiss the dialog and create the appropriate link.

Repair and Compact Issues

• After you compact and repair a database in Access, you may find that data in memo columns is lost for tables that do not have a primary key.
• After you compact and repair a database in Access, adding a new row to a table may throw this error: "The changes you requested to the table were not successful because they would create duplicate values in the index, primary key, or relationship. Change the data in the field or fields that contain duplicate data, remove the index, or redefine the index to permit duplicate entries and try again."
• After you compact and repair a database in Access, the value of a calculated field that is calculating the length of a memo field may return the wrong data.

Microsoft Excel Related Issues

• When importing Excel data into Access which is formatted using rounding, certain numbers may be rounded to too few significant digits.
• Access may crash if you create a new MFC project with ODBC database support and choose an Excel file source.
• If Windows Regional Settings are set to "Romanian (Romania)", exporting with formatting from Access to Excel Workbook (*.xlsx) may result in an error when the file is opened in Excel.

Access Web/SharePoint Issues

• If you filter a column after already having applied a filter on a multi-valued column in a SharePoint list datasheet view, inaccurate results may be returned.
• When viewing a list datasheet view of a document library in SharePoint, you may be unable to edit properties for checked out files. The list datasheet may report that the columns/rows are read-only.
• When viewed in a browser, Access Services 2010 reports show "#Error" for all expressions.
• On Windows 7 with optional tablet PC components installed or on Windows 8, Access may crash when you open a form with a listbox and run code to change that listbox.

Windows 8 64-bit Issue

• When opening an Access MDB file on 64-bit Windows 8 and entering the user security wizard, clicking Finish on the dialog crashes Access and sets the file's security in a state that doesn't allow you to open it again.

Updated Runtime Version

There is an update of the regular and runtime versions of MS Access 2010 here.

Known Issues

Here's Microsoft's KB article on Known issues when you install Office 2010 SP2 and SharePoint 2010 SP2:

Office 2010 SP2

When you install Office 2010 SP2 on a computer that has Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed, you receive the following error message:

The installation of this package failed

To resolve this issue, you have to install the following update first before you install Office 2010 SP2: 925336

FIX: Error message when you try to install a large Windows Installer package or a large Windows Installer patch package in Windows Server 2003 or in Windows XP: "Error 1718. File was rejected by digital signature policy"

SharePoint Server 2010 SP2

After you upgrade the SharePoint Web Front End (WFE) from Windows Server 2008 (R2) to Windows Server 2012, certain SharePoint Designer-customized views that have custom XSL templates may be broken. Moreover, the update can compromise server responsiveness. To resolve this issue, you can install the SharePoint Server update from June 2013 or a later version Cumulative Update (CU) after you upgrade the operating system.

Confirmed Bug between Access 2010 and SharePoint 2013

We and Microsoft have confirmed that after installing SP2, MS Access 2010 can no longer open a table linked to a SharePoint 2013 list.

More information on this issue in this Microsoft Community thread.

Related Resources

Here are some other helpful related resources from FMS and Microsoft.

• History of all the Microsoft Access major version releases, service packs, and recent updates with a summary of enhancements, deprecated features and other changes.
• Update Center for Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Access Runtime Versions

Previous Microsoft Office 2010 Service Packs

The original RTM release of Office 2010 is version 14.0.4763.1000.

Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2010 is version 14.0.6029.1000. You do not need to install SP1 before installing SP2.

Note that there are issues if you are supporting users who may still be using the RTM version of Access 2010. This was our blog post on SP1 which also applies to any later releases: Microsoft Access 2010 Service Pack 1 VBA Project Compatibility Issues