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Microsoft Office is a Suite of Productivity Program s created by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. As well as the office applications, it includes associated Server s 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 Program s. 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 Office 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 Office 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 Slideshow s, 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 Slide s. 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
OTHER PROGRAMS INCLUDED IN THE MAC VERSIONS
WEB SERVICES ASSOCIATED WITH MICROSOFT OFFICE
OLDER PROGRAMS NO LONGER INCLUDED
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. The Office Agent is now hidden by default in Windows versions since Office XP, following mixed public response, and will be removed entirely in Office 2007. 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
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.)
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.
''Pricing as of April 9 , 2005 '' [http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/howtobuy/howtobuy.aspx?pid=howtobuy 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 System s 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
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
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 running on Windows NT 3.51 ]] 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:
SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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