Microsoft Office

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Microsoft Office
The Microsoft Office logo
The Microsoft Office Core Applications
Clockwise: Microsoft Office Excel, Word, OneNote and PowerPoint on Windows Vista.
Design by Microsoft
Developed by Microsoft
Initial release 1990
Latest release 2007 SP1 (12.0.6215.1000) / December 11, 2007 (2007-12-11); 181 days ago
Written in C++/MFC, C#/.NET
OS Microsoft Windows
Platform Cross-platform
Available in over 35 languages
Genre Office suite
License Proprietary
Website Microsoft Office for Windows
Microsoft Office:mac
The Microsoft Office for Mac logo
The Microsoft Office Core Applications
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage; plus Word Publishing Layout and Word Notebook Layout views) running on Mac OS X v10.5
Design by Microsoft
Developed by Microsoft
Initial release 1989
Latest release 2008 (12.1)
Written in C++, Carbon
OS Mac OS X
Platform Cross-platform
Genre Office suite
License Proprietary
Website Microsoft Office for Mac

Microsoft Office is a set of interrelated desktop applications, servers and services, collectively referred to as an office suite, for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Office was introduced by Microsoft in 1989 on Mac OS,[1] with a version for Windows in 1990.[2] Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Additionally, a "Pro" version of Office included Microsoft Access and Schedule Plus. Over the years, Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker, OLE data integration and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software under the Office Business Applications (OBA) brand.

The current versions are Office 2007 for Windows, launched on January 30, 2007,[3] and Office 2008 for Mac OS X, released January 15, 2008. Office 2007/Office 2008 features a new user interface and a new OOXML-based primary file format (docx, xlsx, pptx). Microsoft has made available a free add-on known as the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack" that lets Office 2000-2003 editions open, edit, and save documents created under the new Office 2007 formats.

Contents

[edit] History

Main article: History of Microsoft Office

The very first version of Microsoft Office was released in 1989, not for Windows, but for the Apple Macintosh. Microsoft Office has long been the dominant player when it comes to software that offer word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools[citation needed].

[edit] History of Microsoft Office for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Office 3.0 was the first version of Office to be released for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Office 4.0 was released in 1994, containing Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0, Mail, and Access. Word was called Word 6.0 at this point despite the fact the previous version number was 2.0. The purpose was to use common version numbering with the Mac OS version. Office 4.3 was the last 16-bit version, and is also the last version to support Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5 (Windows NT 3.51 was supported up to and including Office 97).

Office 95 was done as a fully 32-bit version to match Windows 95. Office 95 was available in two versions, Office 95 Standard and Office 95 Professional. The standard version consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Schedule+. The professional edition contains all of the items in the standard version plus Access. If the professional version is purchased in CD-ROM form, it also includes Bookshelf. Microsoft Office 97, a major milestone release which included hundreds of new features and improvements, introduced "Command Bars", a paradigm in which menus and toolbars were made more similar in capability and visual design. Office 97 also featured natural language systems and sophisticated grammar checking.

Office 2000 introduced adaptive menus, where little-used options were hidden from the user. It also introduced a new security feature, built around digital signatures, to diminish the threat of macro viruses. Office 2000 automatically trusts macros (written in VBA6) that were digitally signed from authors who have been previously designated as trusted.

Office XP, released in conjunction with Windows XP, is a major upgrade with numerous enhancements and changes. Office XP introduced the Safe Mode feature. It allows applications such as Outlook to boot when it might otherwise fail. Safe Mode enables Office to detect and either repair or bypass the source of the problem, such as a corrupted registry or a misbehaving add-in. Smart tag is a technology delivered with Office XP. Some smart tags operate based on user activity, such as helping with typing errors. These smart tags are supplied with the products, and are not programmable. For developers, though, there is the ability to create custom smart tags. In Office XP, custom smart tags could work only in Word and Excel. Microsoft Office XP includes integrated voice command and text dictation capabilities, as well as handwriting recognition. Another feature introduced with Office XP is Product Activation, which is also implemented in Windows XP (and later versions of Windows and Office). Office XP is the oldest Office reported to work well with Vista, and is also the last version to support Windows 98/ME/NT 4.0.

In 2003, Microsoft Office 2003 was released. Two new applications made their debut in Office 2003: Microsoft InfoPath and OneNote. It is the first version to use Windows XP style icons. Outlook 2003 provides improved functionality in many areas, including Kerberos authentication, RPC over HTTP, and Cached Exchange Mode. The key benefit of Outlook 2003 is the improved junk mail filter. The current version of Microsoft Office for Windows was released in 2007 and is called Office 2007.

On May 21, 2008 Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will add native support for the OpenDocument Format.[4] EU announced it is going to investigate Microsoft Office OpenDocument Format support.[5]

[edit] History of Microsoft Office for Macintosh

 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


[edit] Components

[edit] Desktop applications

[edit] Word

Main article: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor and was long considered to be the main program in Office, although with the rise of electronic communication that distinction has now passed to Outlook.[citation needed] Word possesses a dominant market share in the word processor market.[citation needed] Its proprietary DOC format is considered a de facto standard, although its most recent version, Word 2007 can also use a new XML-based, Microsoft Office-optimized format called .DOCX which has been standardized by ECMA as Office Open XML. Word is also available in some editions of Microsoft Works. It is available for the Windows and Mac platforms. The first version of Word, released in the fall of 1983, was for the DOS operating system and had the distinction of introducing the mouse to a broad population. Word 1.0 could be purchased with a bundled mouse, though one was not required. The following spring Apple introduced the Mac, and Microsoft released Word for the Mac, which became the most popular Mac application and which, like all Mac apps, required the use of a mouse.

[edit] Excel

Main article: Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. Like Word, it possesses a dominant market share.[citation needed] 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 Mac platforms. The current Mac version (Office 2008) has removed Visual Basic functionality so macros cannot be used and those generated in previous iterations of Office no longer work.

[edit] Outlook/Entourage

Main articles: Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Entourage

Microsoft Outlook, not to be confused with Outlook Express, is a personal information manager and e-mail communication software. The replacement for Windows Messaging, Microsoft Mail and Schedule+ (Plus) starting in Office 97, it includes an e-mail client, calendar, task manager and address book. Although historically it has been offered for the Mac, the closest to an equivalent for Mac OS X is Microsoft Entourage, which offers a slightly different feature set.

[edit] PowerPoint

Main article: Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation program for Windows and Mac. 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. This is convenient for school or work presentations.Office Mobile for Windows Mobile 5.0 and later features a version of PowerPoint called PowerPoint Mobile. It also possesses a dominant market share. Movies, videos, sounds and music, as well as wordart and autoshapes can be added to slideshows.

[edit] Other desktop applications (Windows version only)

[edit] Server applications

[edit] Web services

[edit] Common features

Most versions of Microsoft Office (including Office 97 and later, and possibly 4.3) use their own widget set and do not exactly match the native operating system. This is more apparent in the 2002 or XP release of Microsoft Office where the standard menus were replaced with a colored flat looking, shadowed menu style.

Visual elements of Office packages' widget systems have been included in next versions of Windows systems and have offered some cues into what user interface (UI) elements a major Windows incarnation would employ in the future: The toolbar, colour buttons and the usually gray-coloured '3D' look of Office 4.3 were added to Windows 95; The gradient title bar and flat buttons in Windows 9x/2000.

Similarly, Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a whole new widget system, dubbed "Ribbon", but now known as the "Fluent user interface". [7] The same widget used in Microsoft Office is also used in the Visual Studio product line, though the "Fluent UI" was not announced to be included in future versions of Visual Studio. Later versions of Windows thus inherit the concepts of task-based user activities and easy discoverability of program functions.

Both Windows and Office use "Service Packs" to update software, Office used to release non-cumulative "Service Releases", which were discontinued after Office 2000 Service Release 1.

Programs in past versions of Office often contained substantial Easter eggs. For example, Excel 97 contained a reasonably functional flight-simulator. Versions starting with Office 2000 have not contained any easter eggs in the name of Trustworthy Computing.

[edit] Extensibility

A major feature of the Office suite is the ability for users and third party companies to write add-ins that extend the capabilities of an application by adding custom commands and specialized features. The type of add-ins supported differ by Office versions:

  • Office 97 onwards (standard Windows DLLs i.e. Word WLLs and Excel XLLs)
  • Office 2000 onwards (COM add-ins) [8]
  • Office XP onwards (COM/OLE Automation add-ins) [9]
  • Office 2003 onwards (Managed code add-ins)[10]

[edit] Cross-platform

Microsoft develops Office for Windows and Mac platforms. Beginning with Mac Office 4.2, the Mac and Windows versions of Office share the same file format. Consequently, any Mac with Office 4.2 or later can read documents created with Windows Office 4.2 or later, and vice-versa. Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac drops VBA support.[11] Microsoft has replaced VBA with support for AppleScript. As a result, macros created with Office for Windows will not run on Office for the Mac, and vice versa. However the version after Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 will bring back VBA support.[12] In addition, Microsoft has also ceased development on Microsoft Virtual PC. [2].

There were efforts in the mid 1990s to port Office to RISC processors such as NEC / MIPS and IBM / PowerPC, but they met problems such as memory access being hampered by data structure alignment requirements. Difficulties in porting Office may have been a factor in discontinuing Windows NT on non-Intel platforms.[citation needed]

[edit] Support lifecycle

[edit] Version Compatibility

Latest versions for platforms:

  • Windows NT 3.51: Office 97
  • Windows 95: Office 2000
  • Windows NT4/98/ME: Office XP
  • Windows 2000: Office 2003
  • Windows XP/2003/Vista/Home Server/2008: Office 2007
  • Mac OS 7.5–8.0: Office 98
  • Mac OS 8.1–9: Office 2001
  • Mac OS X 10.1: Office X
  • Mac OS X 10.2–10.3: Office 2004
  • Mac OS X 10.4–10.5: Office 2008

[edit] Windows

Beginning in 2002, Microsoft instituted a policy of Support Lifecycles including: [13][14]

  • Versions earlier than Office 97 (including Outlook 97) are no longer supported.
  • Office 97 (including Outlook 98): Mainstream hotfix support ended on August 31, 2001. Extended hotfix support ended on February 28, 2002. Assisted support ended on January 16, 2004.
  • Office 2000: Mainstream support ended June 30, 2004. Extended support will end on July 14, 2009.
  • Office XP: Mainstream support ended July 11, 2006. Extended support will end on July 12, 2011.
  • Office 2003: Mainstream support will end on April 14, 2009. Extended support will end on April 8, 2014.
  • Office 2007: Mainstream support will end on April 10, 2012. Extended support will end on April 11, 2017.
  • Current and future versions: Mainstream support will end five years after release, or two years after the next release, whichever time is later, and extended support will end five years after that.

[edit] Discontinued applications and features

See also: Category:Discontinued Microsoft software
  • Microsoft Binder: Incorporates several documents into one file and was originally designed as a container system for storing related documents in a single file. The complexity of use and learning curve led to little usage and was removed from releases after Office 2000.
  • Microsoft FrontPage: Web design software (also requires its own server program for some functionality). Offered only as a stand-alone program for the 2003 version. In 2006, Microsoft announced that this was to be discontinued and to be replaced by two different software packages: Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web.
  • Microsoft Mail: Mail client (in old versions of Office, later replaced by Microsoft Schedule Plus and subsequently Microsoft Outlook).
  • Microsoft PhotoDraw: A graphics program that was first released as part of the Office 2000 Premium Edition. A later version for Windows XP compatibility was released, known as PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2. Microsoft discontinued the program in 2001.
  • Microsoft Photo Editor: Photo-editing/raster-graphics software in older Office versions up to Office XP. It was supplemented by Microsoft PhotoDraw in Office 2000 Premium edition.
  • 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 Virtual PC: Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004. Obsolete from 2006 onward due to new Macs possessing the same Intel architecture as Windows PCs. It emulated a standard PC and its hardware.
  • Microsoft Vizact 2000: A program that "activated" documents using HTML, adding effects such as animation. It allows users to create dynamic documents for the Web. Development has ended due to unpopularity.
  • Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002: A business intelligence program for graphical visualization of data and its analysis.
  • Office Assistant, included since 1997 as a part of Microsoft Agent technology, is a system that uses animated characters to offer unrequested context-sensitive suggestions to users and access to relevant parts of the help system. The Assistant is often dubbed "Clippy" or "Clippit", due to its default to a paper clip character, coded as CLIPPIT.ACS. The Office Assistant was hidden by default in Office XP and following mixed public response, not installed by default in Office 2003. It has been removed entirely in Office 2007.

[edit] Criticisms

Microsoft Office has been criticized in the past for using proprietary file formats rather than open standards, which forces users who share data into adopting the same software platform.[15] However, on February 15, 2008, Microsoft made the entire documentation for the binary Office formats freely available under the Open Specification Promise. [16] Also, Office Open XML, the document format for the latest versions of Office for Windows and Mac, has been standarized under both Ecma International and ISO. Ecma International has published the Office Open XML specification free of copyrights and Microsoft has granted patent rights to the formats technology under the Open Specification Promise[17] and has made available free downloadable converters for previous versions of Microsoft Office including Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000 and Office 2004 for the Mac. Third-party implementations of Office Open XML exist on the Mac platform (iWork 08) and Linux (OpenOffice.org 2.3 - Novell Edition only).

Microsoft Office for Mac has for long been criticized for its lack of support of Unicode and BiDi languages, notably Arabic and Hebrew. This has not changed in the 2008 version.[18][19]

[edit] See also

Microsoft Portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ Microsoft Company. The History of Computing Project (2006-10-26). Retrieved on 2006-11-09.
  2. ^ Chronology of Personal Computer Software. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  3. ^ Office 2007 To Be Launched on January 30, 2007, Too.
  4. ^ Office 2007 won't support ISO's OOXML (David Worthington, SDTimes, 21 May 2008)
  5. ^ EU says to study Microsoft's open-source step
  6. ^ 2007 Office system suits
  7. ^ Office Fluent user interface overview
  8. ^ How to build an Office 2000 COM add-in in Visual Basic
  9. ^ How To Create a Visual Basic Automation Add-in for Excel Worksheet Functions
  10. ^ Information about designing Office add-ins by using the .NET Framework
  11. ^ WWDC: Microsoft updates Universal status of Mac apps. Macworld (2006-08-07). Retrieved on 2007-05-25.
  12. ^ Microsoft Mac BU Delivers Strongest Launch in History of Office for Mac. Microsoft (2008-05-13).
  13. ^ Office Family Product Support Lifecycle FAQ
  14. ^ Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ
  15. ^ We Can Put an End to Word Attachments - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
  16. ^ Microsoft Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) File Formats documentation
  17. ^ Microsoft Open Specification Promise
  18. ^ Higgaion » It's official: no RTL support in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac:
  19. ^ Mac Mojo : “Velkommen, Tervetuloa, Velkommen” and “Bienvenue à Paris”

[edit] External links

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