Microsoft Office

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Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. As well as the office applications, it 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.

Related Topics:
Suite - Productivity program - Microsoft - Microsoft Windows - Apple Macintosh - Servers

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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 seperately. 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. (Microsoft Outlook did not yet exist at this time). 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 VBA (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.

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Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 download has just been released. You may download it from the Microsoft Download Center free-of-charge. It includes all previous updates and service packs. There are some new security features.

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Office is considered to be the de facto standard for productivity programs, and has many features not present in other suites. However, the reverse is also true, with other programs having capabilities Office lacks. The next version, 12.0, will have a radically different user interface from the older versions.

Related Topics:
De facto - Productivity program

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