Staying on its strategy of rolling out service packs in phases, Microsoft has announced its plans to release Office 2007 Service Pack 1 thru its automatic update service starting June 16.

The advanced announcement is part of the software maker's promise to give at least a 30-day notice before making Office service packs available through Microsoft Update, which is a part of Windows Vista and Windows XP.

According to Microsoft, Office 2007 SP1, released five months ago as a download on the company's Web site, had tens of millions of downloads and fetched "a very good reaction" from customers.

The company stated that the automatic update would be rolled out gradually to ensure that the service's infrastructure can handle distribution of the software.