Friday, October 12, 2007

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office
The Microsoft Office logo.

Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Onenote (the components of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007) on Windows Vista.
Maintainer: Microsoft
Stable release: • 2007 RTM (12.0.6017.5000) (Windows)

• 2004 Service Pack 3 (11.3.6) (Mac OS X) [+/−]
Preview release: Microsoft Office 2008 (Mac OSX) [+/−]
OS: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Use: Office suite
License: Proprietary
Website: office.microsoft.com

Microsoft Office is an office suite from Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X operating systems. Along with core office applications, it includes associated servers and web-based services. Recent versions of Office are referred as "Office system".

Office was introduced by Microsoft in 1989 on the Mac,[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. A major feature of the Office suite is the ability for users and third party companies to write Component Object Model add-ins, which are supplemental programs that extend the capabilities of an application by adding custom commands and specialized features. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software.

The current versions are Office 2007 for Windows, launched on January 30, 2007,[3] and Office 2004 for Mac, released May 19, 2004[4]. Office 2007, announced on February 15, 2006[5], was released on November 30, 2006 for businesses via volume License and MSDN channels. It features a distinct user interface and a new XML-based primary file format. The new Mac version, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, is expected to be released in January 2008.[6]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Common Office programs

These programs are included in most editions of Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2004 for Mac.

[edit] Word

Main article: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor and was long considered to be the main program of Office, although with the rise of electronic communication that distinction has now passed to Outlook. Word 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 2007 uses a new XML-based format called .DOCX based on the Office Open XML ECMA standard, but has the capability of saving and opening the old .DOC format. 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.

Common extensions: .doc (Word 97-2003), .docx (Word 2007), .dot (Word 97-2003 Template), .dotx (Word 2007 XML Template)

[edit] Excel

Main article: Microsoft 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 Mac platforms.

Common extensions: .xls (Excel 97-2003), .xlsx (Excel 2007)

[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.

Common extensions: .msg, .pst (Outlook 97-2007)

[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. 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. It is available for the Windows and Mac platforms.

Common extensions: .ppt (Powerpoint 97-2003), .pptx (Powerpoint 2007), .pot, .pps

[edit] Other programs

[edit] Web services

[edit] Server components

[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. Recently, Microsoft announced discontinuation of Visual Basic for Applications support in future versions of Office for Mac. In addition, it 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] Editions

The newest version of Microsoft Office is 2007, which was released at the same time as Windows Vista (on January 30, 2007). The different editions of Microsoft Office 2007 are: [7]

  • Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007
  • Microsoft Office Standard 2007
  • Microsoft Office Small Business 2007
  • Microsoft Office Professional 2007
  • Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007

Limited Availability

  • Microsoft Office Basic 2007 (Available only through OEMs)
  • Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 (Available only through volume licensing)
  • Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 (Available only through volume licensing)
Basic Home & Student Standard Small Business Professional Ultimate Professional Plus Enterprise
Word Word Word Word Word Word Word Word
Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel

PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint
Outlook
Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook



Accounting Express Accounting Express Accounting Express




Publisher Publisher Publisher Publisher Publisher




Access Access Access Access





InfoPath InfoPath InfoPath





Groove
Groove

OneNote


OneNote
OneNote






Communicator Communicator

Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 is available in three editions.[8] All three editions include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. The professional edition includes Virtual PC. Also, the Student and Teacher Edition cannot be upgraded when a later version of Office is released.

  • Office for Mac 2004 Student and Teacher Edition
  • Office for Mac 2004 Standard Edition
  • Office for Mac 2004 Professional Edition

[edit] Support lifecycle

Beginning in 2002, Microsoft instituted a policy of Support Lifecycles including: [3] [4]

  • Earlier versions 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 is available through July 14, 2009.
  • Office XP – Mainstream support ended July 11, 2006. Extended support will be provided until July 12, 2011.
  • Office 2003 - Mainstream support will end on January 13, 2009. Extended support will end at January 14, 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 5 years after release, or 2 years after the next release, whenever time is later, and extended support will end 5 years after that.

[edit] Versions and Editions

Most versions of Microsoft Office (including 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 coloured flat looking, shadowed menu style. Similarly, Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a whole new widget system, dubbed "Ribbon", but now known as the "Fluent user interface". [9] 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.

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.

Office programs have contained substantial Easter eggs. For example, Excel 97 contained a reasonably functional flight-simulator. [5]

[edit] Versions for Microsoft Windows

Office 95 editions:

Standard Professional
Word Word
Excel Excel
PowerPoint PowerPoint
Schedule+ Schedule+

Access

Office 2000 Editions:

Standard Small Business Professional Premium Developer
Word Word Word Word Word
Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel
Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook
PowerPoint Small Business Tools PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint

Publisher Publisher Publisher Publisher


Access Access Access



FrontPage FrontPage



PhotoDraw PhotoDraw




Visual Basic
for Applications




Access Runtime

Office XP Editions:

Standard Professional Professional with FrontPage Professional Special Edition Developer
Word Word Word Word Word
Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel
Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook
PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint

Access Access Access Access


FrontPage FrontPage FrontPage



Publisher




Office Developer Tools

[edit] Versions for Mac OS

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac logo.
The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac logo.
  • Office 1 (Word 3, etc.): Released 1990.
  • Office 2 (Word 4, etc.): Released 1992.
  • Office 3 (Word 5, Excel 4, PowerPoint 3, etc.): Released 1993.
  • Office 4.2 (Word 6.0, Excel 5, PowerPoint 4, etc.): Released 1994.
  • Office 4.2.1 (The first Power Mac-aware version and the last 68K version; Word 6.0.1, Excel 5, PowerPoint 4, etc.): Released June 2, 1994.
  • Office 98 (Word/Excel/PowerPoint 98 (v8.0), etc.): Released March 15, 1998.
  • Office 2001 (Word 2001 (v9.0), etc.): Released October 11, 2000.
  • Office v. X (The first Mac OS X/Aqua edition; Word X, etc.): Current version 10.1.9, Released November 19, 2001.
  • Office 2004 (Word 2004, etc.): Current version 11.3.6, Released May 11, 2004.
  • Office 2008 (Word 2008, etc.): Current version N/A, Due to be Released January 2008. [11]

Both Office v. X and 2004 suites run on Intel Macs through the Rosetta emulation layer. Microsoft has announced that Office 2008 for Mac will have universal binaries capable of running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.[12] While the Office Open XML format will be built into Office 2008 for Mac, it is also supported on Office 2004 for Mac with a free conversion tool. [13]Mac versions do not use Product Activation.

[edit] Defunct programs

  • 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. .obd-files
  • 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 (not part of the pre-2003 office suites, was sold separately). 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). .mmf-files
  • 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. .mix-files
  • 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 Schedule Plus – Released with Office 95. It featured a planner, to-do list, and contact information. Its functions were incorporated into Microsoft Outlook. .scd-files
  • Microsoft Virtual PC – Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004. Obsolete from 2006 as Macs use 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.
  • 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 is commonly criticised for its security issues and infections from macro viruses.[14] Secunia reports that out of the 15 vulnerabilities reported in 2006 for Microsoft Office 2003 (Standard Edition), 20% are unpatched, 33% are marked as Extremely Critical and 53% are marked as Highly Critical.[15]

Microsoft Office for Windows requires a plugin to save files in PDF, unlike other suites such as OpenOffice.org that have this feature built-in.[16] Built-in PDF support was to be added to Microsoft Office 2007, but for legal reasons it had to be removed. However, it is available as a free add-on from Microsoft's website.[17][18]

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac is dropping VBA support.[19] Although Microsoft is replacing this with support for AppleScript, it will mean that macros created with Office for Windows will not run on Office for the Mac, and vice versa.

[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. ^ Microsoft (May 19, 2006). Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Spotted Helping Customers Work Smarter to Play Harder. Microsoft. Retrieved on 2006-12-24.
  5. ^ Microsoft (February 15, 2006). Customers to Receive Better Solutions and More Product Options With 2007 Microsoft Office Release. Microsoft. Retrieved on 2006-12-24.
  6. ^ Forbes (August 2, 2007). Microsoft Delays Office for Mac Release.
  7. ^ 2007 Microsoft Office suites, Retrieved on 2007-08-20
  8. ^ Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Editions, Retrieved on 2007-08-20
  9. ^ Office Fluent user interface overview
  10. ^ Foley, Mary Jo (2007-02-14). Office 14: Think first half of 2009. All about Microsoft blog. ZDNet. Retrieved on 2007-02-15.
  11. ^ Forbes (August 2, 2007). Microsoft Delays Office for Mac Release.
  12. ^ Dalrymple, Jim. "Microsoft reveals details of Office 2008 for Mac", Macworld, 2007-01-09. Retrieved on 2007-01-09.
  13. ^ Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2 (Beta). Microsoft (July 31, 2007).
  14. ^ Sooman, Derek (2005-04-13). Fresh Microsoft Office security problems found. TechSpot.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-09.
  15. ^ Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition. Secunia. Retrieved on 2006-11-09.
  16. ^ Beer, Stan (2006-06-03). Adobe yet to explain why no PDF in Microsoft Office. IT Wire. Retrieved on 2006-11-09.
  17. ^ Legal issues around PDF support. Brian Jones:Open XML Formats (2006-06-02). Retrieved on 2006-06-03.
  18. ^ Follow-up on PDF legal issues. Brian Jones:Open XML Formats (2006-06-03). Retrieved on 2006-06-03.
  19. ^ WWDC: Microsoft updates Universal status of Mac apps. Macworld (2006-08-07). Retrieved on 2007-05-25.

[edit] External links

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