On Tuesday, Microsoft released updates for both its Office 2004 and Office 2008 suites for the Mac.

Microsoft Office 2004 version 11.4.2, a 9.1 megabyte download through the AutoUpdate program, repairs a vulnerability in which an outside party could insert malicious code.

The program requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later to install and run.

After much clamoring, the company has also released Microsoft Office 2008 version 12.1.0, the first service pack for the Office 2008 programs.

The update, a 180 megabyte download through the AutoUpdate program, provides the following fixes and changes:
-This update contains several improvements to enhance security, stability, and performance, including fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.

Excel:
-Compatibility: Improved compatibility with files exchanged between Excel 2008 for Mac and Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 for Windows.
-Custom Error Bars: Restored formatting option on the Error Bars panel for data series.
-Printing: More reliable printing for elements on Excel 2008 workbooks.

Entourage:
-Calendar: Significant enhancements to improve calendar view and all-day reminders with reoccurrence.
-Exchange Server support: Overall improvement to synchronization support, including removing attachments from Exchange Server messages and synchronizing to the server, as well as support for editing the contents of Exchange Server messages via AppleScript and synchronizing the changes to the server.
-E-mail images: Ability to send and view images in Entourage from third-party tools.

Word:
-Printing: Improved accuracy when orienting tables with cell shading.
-Document map: Improved reliability and responsiveness to select items.
-Notebook layout: Updated formatting, recording status and a variety of display options Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
-Printing: Improvements to eliminate crashing when printing documents to high-dpi printers and increased overall printing speed by 10 times on some large presentations.
-Mobile viewing: Ability to view Mac .PPTX files on Windows Mobile phones
AppleScript. Ability to use the PowerPoint selection object in AppleScript to implement custom scripts that operate on the current selection in PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office 2008 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run.

If you've tried the updates and noticed any changes, positive or negative, let us know in the comments or forums.