Just two weeks after its October 26 debut, Microsoft has released the first update to Office 2011 for Mac in the form of a version 14.0.1 update, bringing security and performance enhancements to the highly praised application suite.

MacRumors is reporting that Microsoft released the Office for Mac 2011 14.0.1 update on Tuesday, delivering fixes and addressing security vulnerabilities with the two-week old new release.

“This update fixes critical issues in Office 2011, including issues that might cause Office 2011 applications to stop responding or quit unexpectedly,” Microsoft’s update reveals. An associated support document reveals there’s a little more to the 14.0.1 update than just that, also addressing security vulnerabilities and performance enhancements.

“This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and four privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office,” the support document notes. “The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens or previews a specially crafted RTF e-mail message. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”

For now, Office 2008 and Office 2004 remain unpatched from these security vulnerabilities, but Microsoft is promising an update for them will be available “when testing is complete, to ensure a high degree of quality for their release.”

In the meantime, Office 2011 for Mac users can get their update on by going to the Help menu and selecting “Check for Updates” from any of the key applications in the suite, which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the new Outlook, the latter of which is only available as a demo version in the cheaper Home and Student Edition. The 110.5MB download is also available on the company's website.

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