Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"According to a Microsoft security bulletin, seven privately reported vulnerabilities in Excel could allow remote code execution if a user were to open a specially-crafted file. By exploiting those vulnerabilities, an attacker could gain the same user rights as a local user."

So in order to fix this, Microsoft released two updates, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update and Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.8 Update. These updates will, as described by Microsoft, take care of “vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.” The updates will also improve stability and slow performance.

Microsoft also brought out two other updates: Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition 13.0.4 (which will now allow you to synchronize notes, tasks, and categories with Exchange Server), and Microsoft Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.1.4 (which lets you convert Open XML files created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows).

"Microsoft on Tuesday issued updates for its venerable Office suite versions 2004 and 2008. Office 2004 gets a security boost with the Mac 11.5.6 update, which corrects a vulnerability that could allow a remote baddie to overwrite your computer's memory. The 2008 version sees the same security fix in its Mac 12.2.3 update, plus a host of other minor upgrades, such as resolving text spacing issues in documents that originated on Windows system."

This also helps with instability in Word, as well as Excel and PowerPoint. Entourage is also upgraded with an improved junk mail filter. The 2004 update requires OS X 10.2.8 or newer and also that the previous update 11.5.5 be installed. For the 2008 update you need OS X 10.4.9 or newer with the previous 12.1.0 update having been installed prior to this one.

"Ever since Documents to Go came out on iPhone--both the standard version and with Microsoft Exchange Attachments--the publisher has been keeping our interest with promises of a version that could edit Excel documents and create new ones in addition to just viewing them."

And now they have succeeded. With Documents to Go 2.0, you can edit AND create Excel XLS and XLSX documents. I'm sure it is going to be easier to just edit instead of create them, but in case you need to you will have that capability. This isn't the only option available however, as you can also use Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite to do the same things. Both are available in iTunes for $9.99 USD.