Microsoft is improving Office updates to address vulnerabilities faster

MS Office has become an integral part of the life of most PC users, since many people use it to carry out essential tasks, both professionally and privately. Microsoft now wants to improve the update process here so that serious gaps can be addressed more quickly.

Microsoft has a post on its tech community announcing that in the future Office applications can also be updated if the respective programs are running on a computer. Microsoft states that it has developed an optimization that applies a pending Microsoft 365 app update while a computer is idle or in locked mode, even if applications are running.

For critical updates

Up to now, it was not possible for Microsoft to install or distribute a critical emergency update for an app if it was open overnight, for example. “When Office applications are running, the ‘Update Under Lock’ feature only attempts to kill them if it is safe to do so, applies the pending update, and restores all closed applications to their previous state. This process takes about four seconds .”

According to Microsoft, this is a fairly common scenario, for example when you’re working on a Word document but don’t close it at the end of the day to continue working the next day. However, such an open document prevents an update from being applied.

However, with the new feature, the user is returned to a machine that is in its previous state but already running the latest and updated version of the application in question. This improvement applies to Microsoft 365 subscriptions, Visio, Project, and Office 2016, 2019, and 2021 perpetual licenses. Microsoft Teams is not affected as it has a separate update process.