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Microsoft Office

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Microsoft Office
Developer(s)Microsoft
Stable release
Microsoft 365 (Windows)2406 (Build 17726.20160) / July 9, 2024; 57 days ago (2024-07-09)[1]
Microsoft 365 (Mac)16.87 (Build 24071426) / July 16, 2024; 50 days ago (2024-07-16)[2]
One-time purchase (Retail)2021 Version 2406 (Build 17726.20160) / July 9, 2024; 57 days ago (2024-07-09)[3]
One-time purchase (LTSC)2021 Version 2108 (Build 14332.20736) / July 9, 2024; 57 days ago (2024-07-09)[3]
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS X
TypeOffice suite
LicenseProprietary
Websiteoffice.microsoft.com

Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created or purchased by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS operating systems. As well as the core office applications, the Microsoft Office brand 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 1989 on the Macintosh,[4] with a version for Windows following it in 1990.[citation needed] It 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 Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft 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. 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,[5] and Office 2004 for Macintosh, released May 19, 2004[6]. Office 2007, announced on February 15, 2006[7], was released on November 30, 2006 for businesses via the Volume License and MSDN channels. It features a radically different user interface and a new XML-based primary file format. The new Macintosh version, Office 2008 for Mac, is expected to be released in the second half of 2007.[8]

It competes with other commercial software Office suites from IBM and Corel, as well as free open-source alternatives, such as OpenOffice.org.

Common 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.

Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor and long was 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, 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 Macintosh 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 Macintosh, and Microsoft released Word for the Macintosh, 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

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.

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

Outlook/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 the 1997 version of Office, it includes an e-mail client, calendar, task manager and address book. Although historically it has been offered for the Macintosh, the closest to an equivalent for Mac OS X is Microsoft Entourage, which offers a slightly different feature set.

Common extensions: .msg .pst (Outlook 97-2003), - Microsoft Outlook 2007

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) has a version of this program. It 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 Macintosh platforms.

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

Other programs included in the Windows versions

  • Developer Tools – (included only with developer editions)

Other programs included in the Mac versions

  • Virtual PC – Emulates a standard PC and its hardware. Included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2004.
  • Microsoft Entourage – an e-mail client and personal information manager developed by Microsoft

Web services associated with Microsoft Office

Older programs no longer included

File:Nt3 51-word97.png
Word 97 running on Windows NT 3.51. Note that there is an Office Assistant (Clippy or Clippit) in the corner.
  • Binder was originally designed as a container system for storing related documents in a single file. The complexity of use, combined with Binder being "yet another application to learn", meant it received little usage. It was removed from releases after Office 2000 to save the effort of ongoing maintenance. .obd-files
  • 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 Mail – Mail client (in old versions of Office, later replaced by Microsoft Schedule Plus and subsequently Microsoft Outlook). .mmf-files
  • Microsoft Outlook Express – Mail client (in Office 98 Macintosh Edition, later replaced by Microsoft Entourage). .dbx-files
  • 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 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. Microsoft discontinued the program in 2001 because their consumer graphics program Microsoft Picture It! offered richer capabilities. .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 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.

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 paper clip character, coded as CLIPPIT.ACS. The Assistant is the main use of Microsoft Agent technology. The Office Agent 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.

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.

Support lifecycle

Beginning in 2002, Microsoft instituted a policy of "Support Lifecycles". [3] [4]

For Office:

  • Earlier versions than Office 97 (including Outlook 97) are no longer supported.
  • Office 97 (including Outlook 98) – Assisted support ended on January 16, 2004. Mainstream hotfix support ended on August 31, 2001. Extended hotfix support ended on February 28, 2002.
  • 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.
  • 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.

Server components

Editions

The newest version of Microsoft Office is 2007, which was released at the same time as Windows Vista (on January 30, 2007). The Windows version of Microsoft Office 2007 is available in eight editions:

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

The Macintosh version, Microsoft Office for Mac 2004, is available in three editions. All include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage. They software included is identical in each package except for the professional which includes Virtual PC. Also, the Student and Teacher Edition cannot be upgraded, which means when a later version of office is released, people who purchased the student and teacher addition must buy a whole new package which will cost more compared to buying the upgrade package.

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

Cross-platform use

Microsoft develops Office for Windows and Macintosh platforms. Recently, Microsoft announced that it will discontinue Visual Basic for Applications support in future versions of Office for Macintosh. In addition, Microsoft's MacBU has also ceased development on a universal version of Virtual PC, since developing a new version of their virtualization software for the Intel Mac would be just as hard as creating a whole new product from scratch. [5].

Most versions of Office can also be run on Unix-like operating systems through the use of a compatibility layer such as CrossOver or WINE. The older versions are said to run better in WINE than newer ones, while all versions are known to work to some extent.[citation needed]

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.

Versions

Versions for Microsoft Windows OS

This is a table of the different editions of the Office 2000 family:

Standard Small Business Professional Premium Developer
Word Word Word Word Word
Excel Excel Excel Excel Excel
Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook Outlook
PowerPoint Small Business Tool PowerPoint PowerPoint PowerPoint
Publisher Publisher Publisher Publisher
Access Access Access
Frontpage Frontpage
PhotoDraw PhotoDraw
Visual Basic
for Applications
Access Runtime

Standard and Professional Editions also exist as Studyware.

Versions for Apple Macintosh OS

File:Office2004logo.png
The Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh 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, 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 11.3.5, Released May 11, 2004.
  • Office 2008[7] (Word 2008, etc.): Current version N/A, Due to be Released 2nd Half 2007.[10]

Both Office v. X and 2004 Standard Edition run non-natively on Intel Macs through the Rosetta Emulation layer. Microsoft does not intend to update Office 2004 for Intel Macs, but has announced that Office 2008 for Mac, to be released in the second half of 2007, will have universal binaries capable of running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.[11] None of the Macintosh versions to date require Product Activation.

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

  • 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. This is more apparent in the 2002 or XP release of Microsoft Office where standard menus were replaced with a coloured flat looking, shadowed menu style. Similarly, Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a whole new widget system, dubbed "Ribbon."
The same widget used in Microsoft Office is also used in the Visual Studio product line, though the "Ribbon" system was not announced to be included in future versions of Visual Studio.
  • 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.
  • On versions of Microsoft Office before 2003, the Save Icon's floppy disk had the shutter on the wrong way around.
  • Office programs have contained sometimes substantial easter eggs. For example, Excel 97 contained a reasonably functional flight-simulator. [8]

Criticisms

Microsoft Office is commonly criticised for its security issues and infections from macro viruses [12]. 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 [13]

Microsoft Office for Windows requires a plug-in to save files in PDF, unlike other suites such as OpenOffice.org that have this feature built-in[14]. 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[15][16].

Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac is dropping VBA support [17]. 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.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Release notes for Current Channel". Microsoft. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
  2. ^ "Update history for Office for Mac". Microsoft Learn. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
  3. ^ a b "Update history for Office LTSC 2021 and Office 2021". Microsoft Learn. Retrieved 2024-07-30.
  4. ^ "Microsoft Company". The History of Computing Project. 2006-10-26. Retrieved 2006-11-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ "Office 2007 To Be Launched on January 30, 2007, Too".
  6. ^ Microsoft (May 19, 2006). "Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Spotted Helping Customers Work Smarter to Play Harder". Microsoft. Retrieved 2006-12-24.
  7. ^ Microsoft (February 15, 2006). "Customers to Receive Better Solutions and More Product Options With 2007 Microsoft Office Release". Microsoft. Retrieved 2006-12-24.
  8. ^ Microsoft (January 9, 2007). "It's Coming: Mac BU Announces Intent to Deliver Office 2008 for Mac". Microsoft. Retrieved 2007-01-10.
  9. ^ Foley, Mary Jo (2007-02-14). "Office 14: Think first half of 2009". All about Microsoft blog. ZDNet. Retrieved 2007-02-15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Fried, Ina (2007-04-02). "Microsoft starts testing Office 2008 for Mac". CNET Networks. Retrieved 2007-04-02. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ Dalrymple, Jim (2007-01-09). "Microsoft reveals details of Office 2008 for Mac". Macworld. Retrieved 2007-01-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ Sooman, Derek (2005-04-13). "Fresh Microsoft Office security problems found". TechSpot.com. Retrieved 2006-11-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  13. ^ "Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition". Secunia. Retrieved 2006-11-09.
  14. ^ Beer, Stan (2006-06-03). "Adobe yet to explain why no PDF in Microsoft Office". IT Wire. Retrieved 2006-11-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  15. ^ "Legal issues around PDF support". Brian Jones:Open XML Formats. 2006-06-02. Retrieved 2006-06-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  16. ^ "Follow-up on PDF legal issues". Brian Jones:Open XML Formats. 2006-06-03. Retrieved 2006-06-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  17. ^ "WWDC: Microsoft updates Universal status of Mac apps". Macworld. 2006-08-07. Retrieved 2007-05-25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
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