<p>In a move that won't surprise Office 2010 followers, in the past few hours Microsoft released Office 2010 Service Pack 2, widely anticipated to be the last service pack for the three-year-old workhorse. Office 2010 SP2 arrives along with companion patches to SharePoint and OWA. It's available on the TechNet and MSDN sites, the Download Center, and should start showing up momentarily in Microsoft Update -- although it isn't yet being designated/checked for automatic updates.</p><p>My advice is to hold off, as with all Service Packs, but chances are very good this one will be quite clean. Microsoft started beta testing it in January, and opened up the SP2 beta to public testing in early April. Reports of problems have been few and far between. If you've been keeping up on updates to Office 2010 -- particularly through March of so of this year -- there's no pressing need to install SP2.</p><p>Microsoft's official announcement on the Office Sustained Engineering TechNet blog, dated July 16 (but available only in the past few hours) describes the improvements in SP2:</p><p>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. The issues fixed specifically in the service pack are listed in the SP2 changes list.</p><p><a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/trifecta-microsoft-patches-office-sharepoint-and-office-web-apps-223344">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/07/23/office-2010-sp2.aspx">Microsoft Releases Service Pack 2 for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010</a> (Redmondmag.com)</p><p><a href="http://windowsitpro.com/microsoft-office/microsoft-office-2010-and-sharepoint-2010-service-pack-2-released">Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 2 Released</a> (Windows IT Pro)</p><p><a href="http://www.winbeta.org/news/microsoft-releases-office-2010-and-office-web-apps-service-pack-2-sp2">Microsoft releases Office 2010 and Office Web Apps Service Pack 2 (SP2)</a> (WinBeta)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=d-K4tRDiB-UcUrMPPf0IzG_CGbxjM&ned=us">9 additional articles.</a></p>