diff --git a/RELEASE-NOTES.txt b/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..41523924a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+
+The Apache POI is pleased to announce the release of POI 3.8. The release is available for download at:
+
+http://poi.apache.org/download.html
+
+See the full release notes below for details about this release.
+
+Release Notes -- Apache POI -- Version 3.8
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+Apache POI is well-known in the Java field as a library for reading and
+writing Microsoft Office file formats, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and
+Word. See http://poi.apache.org/ for more details
+
+Apache POI 3.8 is an incremental feature release based on and
+compatible with earlier POI 3.8-beta* releases. POI 3.8 is considered stable and recommended for production use.
+
+Release highlights:
+
+* NPOIFS: NIO driven API to read OLE2 filesystems with low memory footprint.
+* SXSSF: a low-memory footprint API built on top of XSSF that can be used when very large spreadsheets have to be produced, and heap space is limited
+* poi-excelant: Ant tasks for running POI against a workbook
+* Supported evaluation of new Excel formulas: IRR,NPV,MROUND,VAR,VARP,CLEAN,CHAR,ADDRESS,HOUR,MINUTE,SECOND,RATE,WORKDAY,NETWORKDAYS,SUMIFS,RANK
+* XSLF usermodel API: POI's implementation of the PowerPoint 2007 OOXML (.xlsx) file format. XSLF provides a rich usermodel API and a PPTX2PNG utility to export slides to images.
+* WordToFO, WordToHtml and WordToText converters: utilities to export MS Word .doc files into XSL-FO, html and text files. Output from WordToFO can be used to convert .doc files to pdf using Apache FOP.
+
+Other notable changes:
+* Numerous improvements and refactorings in HWPF, Java API for MS Word .doc files: support for reading
+ footnotes, endnotes and bookmarks, improved support for hadlings tables, paragraphs, text runs and much more...
+* Initial support for charts in XSSF
+* support for OOXML Agile Encryption
+
+A full list of changes is available in the change log: http://poi.apache.org/changes.html.
+People interested should also follow the dev mailing list to track further progress.
+
+Release Contents
+----------------
+
+This release comes in two forms:
+ - pre-built binaries containing compiled versions of all Apache POI components and documentation
+ (poi-bin-3.8-20120326.zip or poi-bin-3.8-20120326.tar.gz)
+ - source archive you can build POI from (poi-src-3.8-20120326.zip or poi-src-3.8-20120326.tar.gz)
+ Unpack the archive and use the following command to build all POI components with Apache Ant 1.6+ and JDK 1.5 or higher:
+
+ ant jar
+
+ Pre-built versions of all POI components are also available in the central Maven repository
+ under Group ID "org.apache.poi" and Version "3.8"
+
+All release artifacts are accompanied by MD5 checksums and a PGP signatures
+that you can use to verify the authenticity of your download.
+The public key used for the PGP signature can be found at
+http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/poi/tags/REL_3_8_FINAL/KEYS
+
+
diff --git a/build.xml b/build.xml
index acf559dd4f..f40309746d 100644
--- a/build.xml
+++ b/build.xml
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ under the License.
The Apache POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.8 beta 5.
- This includes a large number of bug fixes and enhancements.
+ The Apache POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.8. This includes a large number of bug fixes and features. See the
+ full release notes for more details.
A full list of changes is available in the change log.
- People interested should also follow the dev mailing list to track further progress. A full list of changes is available in the change log.
+ People interested should also follow the dev mailing list to track further progress. See the downloads page for more details.
The Apache POI team is pleased to announce the release of 3.7. This includes a large number of bug fixes, and some - enhancements (especially text extraction). See the - full release notes for more details. -
-A full list of changes is available in the change log. - People interested should also follow the dev mailing list to track further progress.
-See the downloads page for more details.
-
The Apache POI Project's mission is to create and maintain Java APIs for manipulating various file formats
diff --git a/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml b/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
index ef6a7f8a23..bdcd709698 100644
--- a/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
+++ b/src/documentation/content/xdocs/status.xml
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@