Microsoft Office
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Infobox Software2 Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. As well as the office applications, it includes associated servers and Web-based services. Recent versions of Office are now called the 'Office System' rather than the 'Office Suite' to reflect the fact that they include Servers as well.
Office made its first appearance in the early '90s, and was initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications that were previously marketed and sold separately. The main selling point was that buying the bundle was substantially cheaper than buying each of the individual applications on their own. The first version of Office contained Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Additionally, a "Pro" version of Office included Microsoft Access and Schedule Plus. Over the years the Office applications have grown substantially closer together from a technical standpoint, sharing features such as a common spell checker, OLE data integration and the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. In recent years, Microsoft has attempted to position Office as a development platform in its own right, but has had mixed results with this.
Office is currently the most popular office suite in the world and considered by many to be the de facto standard for productivity programs. Office 2007, which was officially announced on February 16, 2006, will have a radically different user interface and a new XML-based primary file format.
Office programs
These programs are included in all editions of Microsoft Office 2003, except Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003. Microsoft Office Basic Edition includes Word, Excel and Outlook only.
Office Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor. It is considered to be the main program of Office. It possesses a dominant market share in the word processor market. Its proprietary DOC format is considered a de facto standard, although its most recent version, Word 11.0/2003, also supports an XML-based format. Word is also available in some editions of Microsoft Works. It is available for the Windows and Macintosh platforms. Its main competitors are OpenOffice.org Writer, StarOffice, Corel WordPerfect, Apple Pages and AbiWord.
Office Excel
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. Like Microsoft Word, it possesses a dominant market share. It was originally a competitor to the dominant Lotus 1-2-3 but it eventually outsold it and became the de facto standard. It is available for the Windows and Macintosh platforms. Its main competitors are OpenOffice.org Calc, StarOffice, Corel Quattro Pro and Gnumeric. SPSS is often used for advanced statistical applications.
Office Outlook
Microsoft Outlook, not to be confused with Outlook Express, is a personal information manager and e-mail communication software. The replacement for Microsoft Mail starting in the 1997 version of Office, it includes an e-mail client, calendar, task manager and address book. Its e-mail program's main competitors are Mozilla Thunderbird/Mozilla, and Eudora. Its personal information manager's main competitors are Mozilla, Lotus Organizer, and Novell Evolution. It is available for Windows; a version is also included with most Pocket PC handhelds. Its Macintosh equivalent is Microsoft Entourage.
Office PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation program for Windows and Macintosh. It is used to create slideshows, composed of text, graphics, movies and other objects, which can be displayed on-screen and navigated through by the presenter or printed out on transparencies or slides. Windows Mobile 2005 (Magneto) will have a version of this program. It possesses a dominant market share. Its main competitors are OpenOffice.org Impress, Corel Presentations and Apple Keynote.
Office Publisher
Microsoft Publisher is software that can create newsletters, business cards, flyers, greeting cards or even postcards. It has built in templates to help users professionally design and make publications. Also, Publisher 2003 has support for commercial printing and large quantity ink jobs.
Other programs included in the Windows versions
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- Microsoft Access – database manager. For the 2003 version, included in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, and Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003.
- Microsoft InfoPath – application that enables users to design rich XML-based forms. Included in Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003.
- Microsoft FrontPage – web design software (also requires its own server program). Offered only as a stand-alone program for the 2003 version (not part of the office suite).
- Microsoft Visio – diagram software.
- Microsoft Office Picture Manager – basic photo management software (similar to a basic version of Google's Picasa or Adobe's Photoshop Elements).
- Microsoft Photo Editor – photo editing/raster graphics software in older Office versions, and again in XP. It was temporarily supplemented by Microsoft PhotoDraw in Office 2000 Premium edition.
- Microsoft Project – project manager.
- Microsoft OneNote – note taking software for use with tablet PCs or regular PCs.
- Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 - [1]
- Developer Tools – (included only with developer editions)
Other programs included in the Mac versions
- Microsoft Entourage – Personal information manager and communication software for Macintosh only (similar to Outlook).
- Virtual PC – Emulates a standard PC and its hardware. Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004
Web services associated with Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Update – Web site. Similar to Windows Update, but also encompasses other Microsoft applications.
- Microsoft Office Live – Web service. An online Office suite as part of Microsoft's Windows Live initiative.
- Microsoft Office Online – Web site. Included in all versions of Microsoft Office 2003.
- Microsoft Office Update – Web site. Patch detection and installation service for Office 2000, XP, and 2003. - [2]
Older programs no longer included
- Microsoft Binder – incorporates several documents into one file.
- Binder was a major flop for Microsoft, and is not very widely used. Newer versions of Office often do not include it for this reason.
- Microsoft Schedule Plus – released with Office 95. It featured a Planner, To do list, and Contact Information. Its functions were incorporated into Microsoft Outlook.
- Microsoft Mail – mail client (in old versions of Office, later replaced by Microsoft Outlook).
- Microsoft Outlook Express – mail client (in Office 98 Macintosh Edition, later replaced by Microsoft Entourage).
- Microsoft Vizact 2000 – a program that "activated" documents using HTML, adding effects such as animation. The main reason for its unpopularity was because many people had no idea what it did by looking at its box alone, and therefore did not buy it.
- Microsoft PhotoDraw – a graphics program that was first released in 1998 and later repackaged as PhotoDraw 2000 v2 as part of the Office 2000 Premium Edition. The program was discontinued in 2001, reasons given by Microsoft were that their consumer graphics program Microsoft Picture It! offered richer capabilities.
Since 1997 Office has included Office Assistant, a system that uses animated characters to offer unrequested context-sensitive suggestions to users and access to relevant parts of the help system. Intended to make the software less intimidating to new users, it is typically disabled by experienced users. The Assistant is often dubbed "Clippy" or "Clippit," due to its default to a paperclip character, coded as CLIPPIT.ACS. The Assistant is the main use of Microsoft Agent technology.
Also, beginning with Macintosh Office 4.2, the Macintosh and Windows versions of Office share the same file format. Consequently, any Macintosh with Office 4.2 or later can read documents created with Windows Office 4.2 or later, and vice-versa.
Office 11.0/2003 introduced a new, optional file format for the entire suite, built on XML technology. Office X for Mac is also built to handle this file format.
Other related companion servers
- Microsoft Office Live Communications Server - real time communications server
- Microsoft Office Project Server - project management server
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server collaboration server
Editions
The Windows version of Microsoft Office 11.0/2003 is available in six editions: (Please note that for the most part, pricing reflects installation on only a single computer.)
- Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 11.0/2003 (MSRP New User Price $149 US)
- Microsoft Office Basic Edition 11.0/2003 (bundled with new computers only)
- Microsoft Office Standard Edition 11.0/2003 (MSRP New User Price $399 US; Upgrade Price $239 US)
- Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 11.0/2003 (MSRP New User Price $449 US; Upgrade Price $279 US)
- Microsoft Office Professional Edition 11.0/2003 (MSRP New User Price $499 US; Upgrade Price $329 US)
- Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 11.0/2003 (volume licensing only)
The Macintosh version, Microsoft Office for Mac 2004, is available in three editions. All include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. They are identical except for pricing and the inclusion of Virtual PC in the Professional Edition.
- Office for Mac 2004 Student and Teacher Edition (MSRP New User Price $149 US)
- Office for Mac 2004 Standard Edition (MSRP New User Price $399 US; Upgrade Price $239 US)
- Office for Mac 2004 Professional Edition (MSRP New User Price $499 US; Upgrade Price $329 US)
Pricing as of April 9, 2005 [3] [4]
Cross-platform use
Microsoft develops Office primarily for Windows and secondarily for Macintosh. However, most versions of the suite can also be run on Unix-like operating systems through the use of a compatibility layer such as CrossOver Office or WINE.
The older, simpler versions tend to run considerably better on WINE than newer ones. However, all versions are known to work to some extent.
Versions
Versions for Microsoft Windows OS
- Office 3.0 (CD-ROM version: Word 2.0c, Excel 4.0a, PowerPoint 3.0, Mail) - released August 30, 1992 (repackaged as Office 92)
- Office 4.0 (Word 6.0, Excel 4.0, PowerPoint 3.0) - released January 17 1994
- Office for NT 4.2 (Word 6.0 [32-bit, i386 and Alpha], Excel 5.0 [32-bit, i386 and Alpha], PowerPoint 4.0 [16-bit], "Microsoft Office Manager") - released July 3 1994
- Office 4.3 (The last 16-bit version; Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0 and in the pro version: Access 2.0) - released June 2 1994
- Office 7.0/'95 (Word '95, etc.) - released August 30 1995
- Office 8.0/'97 (Word '97, etc.) - released December 30 1996 (was published on CD-ROM as well as on a set of 45 3½-inch floppy disks)
- Office 9.0/2000 (Word 2000, etc.) - released January 27 1999
- Office 10.0/2002/XP (Word 2002, etc.) - released May 31 2001
- Office 11.0/2003 (Word 2003, etc.) - released November 17 2003
- Office 12.0/2007 - due to be released simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously with Windows Vista, Microsoft's next major consumer operating system.
There are variants of more recent versions such as Small Business Edition, Student and Teacher Edition, Professional Edition and Developer Edition with different collections of applications and pricing points.
Versions for Apple Macintosh OS
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- Office 1 (Word 3, etc.) - released 1990
- Office 2 (Word 4, etc.) - released 1992
- Office 3 (Word 5, etc.) - released 1993
- Office 4.2 (The first Power Mac-aware version; Word 6.0, etc.) - released June 2 1994
- Office 98 (Word 98, etc.) - released March 15 1998
- Office 2001 (Word 2001, etc.) - released October 11 2000
- Office v.X (The first Mac OS X/Aqua edition; Word X, etc.) - released November 19 2001
- Office 2004 (Word 2004, etc.) - released May 11 2004 Screenshot: Image:Word notebook.gif
Add ins
A major feature of applications in the Office suite is the ability for users and third party companies to write Office COM add-ins. Component Object Model (COM) add-ins are supplemental programs that extend the capabilities of an application by adding custom commands and specialized features that can accommodate specific tasks.
Trivia
Image:Nt3 51-word97.png For some reason, most versions of Microsoft Office (including 97 and later, and possibly 4.3) use their own widget set, and as a result do not exactly match the native operating system.
Whereas Windows uses "Service Packs", Office used to release "Service Releases". However, after Office 2000 Service Release 1, Office releases only Service Packs. Service Releases are not cumulative (i.e. it is necessary to install each release in turn) whereas Service Packs are. This means that any copy of the original Office 2000 ("RTM" or "Gold" in Microsoft documentation) requires Service Release 1 to be installed before a Service Pack can be installed.
Alternatives
There are also several alternative office suites available, including:
- OpenOffice.org, a free and open-source office suite for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh users. It includes partial compatibility with Microsoft Office's core applications. However, it lacks some of Office's more advanced features, especially in the areas of scripting (VBA) and workplace collaboration (SharePoint). It also does not support Microsoft Office Publisher documents, and does not include a mail client à la Microsoft Office Outlook.
- NeoOffice, an open-source OpenOffice.org port for Mac OS X that integrates into its Aqua interface.
- StarOffice, based on the OpenOffice code.
- Corel's WordPerfect Office.
- iWork, Apple's Mac-only office suite. Includes Pages, for word-processing, and Keynote, for presentations.
- KOffice, an open-source office suite which is part of the KDE Desktop Environment.
- GNOME Office, a loosely coupled group of open-source applications including Abiword and Gnumeric, which is targetted for the GNOME desktop environment.
- Lotus SmartSuite, provided by IBM contains a word-processing program called Word Pro, a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3, a presentation program called Lotus Freelance Graphics and a database program called Lotus Approach. Lotus Notes provides the email/PIM portion of the Lotus offering.
- SoftMaker Office, an office suite from Germany including a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database manager, and a programming tool.
- ThinkFree Office, a free, web-based office suite. Compatibility with Microsoft Office is debatable.
See also
External links
- Microsoft Office (for Windows) Home Page
- Microsoft Office 2004 (for Mac OS X) Home Page
- Microsoft Office 2003 Editions Quick Reference Matrix
- Microsoft Office Converters and Viewers (for Windows, free-of-charge)
- Microsoft Office X (for Mac OS X) Home Page
- Microsoft Office 2001 (for Mac OS 8-9) Home Page
- Office Blog (in French)
- Microsoft Office Converters and Viewers - free programs for Windows by Microsoft which mainly enables one to view previously saved Microsoft Office documents.
- Trace - Freeware privacy utility that looks for server names, macros, email addresses, track changes and comments. It works on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
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