It didn't take long for bugs to pop up in Office 2000. Frustrated users reported Word 2000 locking up and Excel 2000 refusing to retain AutoSave settings, for instance. Nine months later, Microsoft issued its first service release to fix the suite's problems. SR-1 doesn't add any productivity features to Office 2000, but it fixes over 300 glitches in Word, Excel, FrontPage, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Access.

But don't grab SR-1 and run: If your PC once ran Office 2000 on Windows NT and you've since upgraded to Windows 2000, Microsoft urges you not to install SR-1. Such users have run into isolated problems with Internet Explorer, including difficulties with searching and clicking on hyperlinks. You're better off waiting for the SR-1 Update, which promises to fix these flaws. The SR-1 update should be available at officeupdate.com by the time you read this.

Also, if your system contains a prerelease version of Office 2000 and you try to upgrade to SR-1, you might have trouble installing SR-1. Even worse, some of your Office apps might disappear. To avoid problems, Microsoft says you need to uninstall your existing copy of Office 2000, reinstall the final version (and only the final version) of Office, and upgrade to SR-1.

If you're cleared to install SR-1, you can get the free upgrade from the Office Update site. The download's size ranges from 26MB to 40MB, depending on the applications you've installed. Corporate system administrators should go to Microsoft's Office Resource Kit Journal.

Don't be surprised, however, if trying to install SR-1 turns out to be prohibitively difficult. In multiple attempts, we never got more than a quarter of the way through the download process. Our advice? Order the the Microsoft Clip Gallery PSS download page. Microsoft offers it for free, with no shipping or handling fee. While installing SR-1, you'll need to insert the original Office 2000 CDs. So if your system came with Office 2000 preloaded, you must get copies of the CDs from your PC vendor, unless you already have them.