Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a series of suites of productivity programs by Microsoft.

They have generally included:

• Word word processor,
• Excel spreadsheet,
• Outlook Personal information manager and communication software
• PowerPoint presentation software,

They have sometimes also included:

• Access database manager
• Microsoft Entourage[?] Personal information manager and communication software for Apple Macintosh only
• Microsoft Publisher[?] Desktop publishing software
• Microsoft FrontPage web design software
• Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser
• Microsoft Visio[?] diagram software
• Microsoft Project[?] project manager
• Microsoft MapPoint[?] mapping software

Major Microsoft Windows versions include:

• Office 4.3 (The last 16-bit version; Word 6.0, etc.)
• Office 95 (Word 95, etc.)
• Office 97 (Word 97, etc.)
• Office 2000 (Word 2000, etc.)
• Office XP (Word 2002, etc.)
• Office 2003 (Word 2003, etc.) - to be released

There have been variants of the later versions such as Small Business Edition, Professional Edition and Developer Edition with slightly different collections of applications.

Beginning with the 1997 edition, Microsoft Agent (in 2000 and up) and a similar actor technology (in 97) have been used to provide the Office Assistant, sometimes dubbed "Clippy" or "Clippit", an interactive help tool.

Apple Macintosh versions include:

• Office 98 (Word 98, etc)
• Office 2001 (Word 2002, etc)
• Office v.X (Word X, etc)

Alternatives

Microsoft Office is proprietary software. Open source applications exist which have similar functionality, for example, OpenOffice, KOffice and GNOME Office.