B2TR coming out tomorrow!

I just saw the post here thanks to ZDNet:

Microsoft plans on Thursday to release an updated test version of Office 2007, in what the company hopes will be the last milestone before finalizing the product later this year.

Be ready to install B2TR : )   I don't have download links yet but once I do I will post them!

With the upcoming B2TR release I wanted to give you all some steps and thoughts about this upgrade:

  • It is a patch update, that means that you _must_ have Office 2007 Beta2 installed on the system.
  • The patch for OneNote will include the patch for all of Office so you don't need two downloads.
  • Since it includes both products (as well as others) it will be big!  ~495 megs (English version) so be ready with your downloads
  • It will be free, no charge for the download
  • Make sure that you install the newest version of WDS so that search works great in OneNote & Outlook
  • Make sure to download the PDF+XPS addin if you want to publish to those formats;

Some notes about OneNote 2007 B2TR:

  • Per usual you can open notes created in OneNote 2007 B1, B1TR, B2 & B2TR but once you open the notes in OneNote 2007 B2TR they will be updated to the newest version of the OneNote 2007 file format.  You will not be able to open B2TR files in B2, so if you are really cautious you might want to make a backup of your files before opening OneNote 2007 B2TR for the first time.  I don't do this but then again I am not that cautious as some of your are and I don't store my class notes in OneNote : )
  • If you open for the first time since OneNote 2003 then it should take of upgrade automatically however if you ran OneNote 2007 Beta2 at any point then the first boot reg key will still be set.
  • Log bugs for issues that you have!

Final comments, according to this press release:

"The company remains on track to complete work on the 2007 Microsoft Office system in October of this year and is planning to make the product available to the business customers through the volume licensing program in October 2006.

That being said B2TR is going to be release in mid-Sept 2006 so that means there is a quick turn around for bugs and customer issues.  If you have issues with OneNote 2007 B2TR please log a bug against OneNote on our Microsoft Connect site and the sooner that you do this the better!  Remember quality is the #1 priority for the team so getting feedback from you all is vitally important.

I also wanted to point out that you can log bugs against Publisher 2007 and log bugs against Project 2007 on their Connect sites.  Thank you for beta testing Office 2007 and making this the best release yet!