Office 97 Overview

New Versions

Microsoft Office 97 offers many new choices. The user will be able to choose what version of Office 97 best suits his/her needs. There many be as many as four versions offered. They are reported to be:

• Office Standard Version - New versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, and Outlook (a desktop information manager)
• Office Professional Version - All of Office Standard plus Access
• Small Business Version - New versions of Word and Excel plus Publisher and a mapping program
• Developers Version - A bundle of software development tools

Office Assistant

The Office Suite has been improved. One of its best features is its new usability and help features. Instead of scrolling through a Help menu index, you will be able to ask the Office Assistant. The Assistant is an animated on-screen helper that can give answers or tips automatically or manually. And if you don't want its help, you can turn it off.

Another improvement in the suite is its natural-language technology. You simply type your question into a query and the Assistant gives the answer. Additionally, Office 97 has a Command Bar, a toolbar that allows you to drag and drop commands from the drop-down menus onto one bar.

Outlook

One of Office's best features is Outlook, a program that combines personal and workgroup scheduling, contact and task management, and document sharing features in one place. It improves upon several applets that were in Schedule Plus and offers new components. Outlook provides a good alternative for users who need a simple solution for group scheduling that's integrated with a PIM.

Outlook is customizable, offering five views to present personal information. These include tables, calendars, cards, icons, and timelines. You can track the work you do in Office applications with the Journal and keep records for billing purposes or finding files created in the past. Outlook also enables you to sort by E-mail, tasks, appointment, and documents by using a keyword on any piece of information you enter. There is also a Voting feature that polls people with a multiple-choice question and tracks the results.

Binder

Binder came out with Office 95 and is improved in Office 97. It allows you to group all of your documents, worksheets, and presentations for a project in one place. Binder lets you organize and print the files as a single unit with continuous pagination.

OfficeArt

An easy-to-use addition to Office is a draw module that works in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint called OfficeArt. OfficeArt offers a large group of shapes that can be selected to paste into documents. They can then be resized or rotated easily. Special effects and 3-D effects are also available.

Shortcut Bar

The Shortcut Bar was new in Office 95 and allows you to find and open documents or databases quickly, set up appointments, and send E-mail. Customize the Shortcut Bar to display frequently used documents as buttons. The change you will notice in Office 97 is that this feature must be installed in a Custom Installation rather than a Typical Installation.

Long File Names

A new feature in Office 95 was descriptive file names with multiple words and spaces making it easier to identify documents, workbooks, presentations, and databases.

Programmability

New in Office 95 and improved in Office 97, Visual Basic for Applications is now the standard programming environment for all Office applications, allowing you to automate and design Office to suit your needs and those of your co-workers. If you have important macros created in earlier versions of Office, they will still work in Office 97.

IntelliMouse

Another new feature in Office 97 is the IntelliMouse, a pointing device that makes it easy to navigate within your documents. The new roller/button allows you to scroll without having to move the pointer to the scroll bar. Panning and AutoScroll let you move between sections in documents quickly. With Zoom you get a bird's-eye view of a section.

The Web

Office 97 comes with built-in tools to help you develop and use the power of the Web. The Web toolbar makes it easy to search for and open Office documents on the Web. Add hyperlinks to documents, move through different types of documents easily, work with co-workers on a single document, and develop your own Web sites easily. You can also open Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) files.

Value Pack

If you install Office from a CD, you then have the Value Pack available. The Value Pack includes additional templates, clip art, and other add-ons that make working with Office applications easy and productive.