Microsoft Office, Long-Term Strategy and Trends



Note: This document will be updated periodically, both with new material and with updates to existing materials as circumstances warrant. It will be covering not only things like Office 2003 features, but also Office strategic directions and other areas of interest involving Office. Check back from time to time to see the latest version.

New Features in Office 2003:

Word 2003:

1) In addition to being able to protect the entire document, you can now protect sections of a document, and even create a list of people who can edit each section.

2) A new Compare Documents feature has been added that allows you to open two versions of a file in side-by-side windows. While the two documents are display, Synchronous Scrolling is enabled, so that as you scroll through one document, the other document also scrolls. This makes the comparison of the two documents much easier.

3) Word 2003 now has a Document Workspaces feature (as do the other Excel, Power Point, and Visio modules of Microsoft Office 2003) that can be utilized if you are working on a network that has Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services installed on your server. This allows you to put a document you create onto the Document Workspaces area of the server, other colleagues can then have access to it to make modifications. The actual procedure is to send your colleagues an email with the document attached. You then become the administrator of the Document Workspace for that document, and all the recipients become members of the Workspace for that document, where they can make modifications. You as the administrator are given authority to coordinate, keep track of, and control the modifications.

4) Word 2003 now has an Information Rights Management feature (as do the Excel and Power Point modules of Microsoft Office 2003) which helps you prevent information from being read, or even changed, by unauthorized people. You, as the creator of the document, can give specified users, or groups of users, read access, no access, or change access. You can even set expiration dates by which access becomes available or is denied. Additionally, if you are on a network, you can have your network administrator perform these same functions or more company wide.

5) Word 2003 now allows you to save documents in XML format so your document’s content can be processed independently from the Word .doc format. So your content can be easily sent, for example, over a network and utilized by a non-Word application. You can even attach an XML Schema to your Word document, and have the ability to then apply XML tags to your document in accordance with the Schema, plus view your XML markup.

Excel 2003:

1) Forty of Excel 2003’s statistical functions have been improved and may give results different than prior versions of Excel. These range from BINOMDIST to ZTEST, and are listed in the Excel 2003 Help.

2) Excel 2003 now contains industry standard XML support (as does Word 2003 and Access 2003). This now allows for integrated business solutions involving non-Microsoft applications, something that was not possible previously. With the use of XML Schemas, you can now pull information out of previously incompatible documents (invoices or orders as just one example) and populate an Excel worksheet with the information.

3) Excel worksheets can now be converted into Smart Documents, which can pull data out of external sources to fill in information. For example, a customized order entry form in an Excel 2003 worksheet can automatically fill in the customer information from an outside database.

4) Excel 2003 also has the new Document Workspaces feature, described in point 3 under the Word 2003 section.

5) Excel 2003 now has the new Information Rights Management feature, described in point 4 under the Word 2003 section.

6) Excel 2003 now has a feature that allows you to compare two workbooks side by side, using the “Compare Side by Side with” command on the Windows menu.

Access 2003:

1) You can now easily backup the complete database before making major changes to it. You can save it to the default backup location or the current folder. If you need to restore it, you simply rename it and you have your saved database back.

2) You can now specify sorting on up to four fields in the List Box and Combo Box wizards in forms and reports, as well as the Lookup wizard in the Access database.

3) In Access 2003, you now have more control over the behavior of the AutoCorrect feature. You will get an Auto Correct Options button next to text that was automatically corrected. This gives you the option, if you don't want the correction to occur, to undo a correction or to turn the Auto Correct option on or off.

4) If you are in the SQL or Query Design views, you can now change the font and font size of the text with the new “Query design font” option on the Tables/Queries tab of the Options dialog box, found on the Tools menu. Be aware that when you make the change it applies to all Access databases.

5) Access 2003 now contains industry standard XML support (as does Word 2003 and Excel 2003). This now allows for integrated business solutions involving non-Microsoft applications, something that was not possible previously. With the use of XML Schemas, you can now pull information out of previously incompatible documents (invoices or orders as just one example) and populate an Access database with the information.

Power Point 2003:

1) The Microsoft Office Power Point viewer is now packaged automatically with the Power Point Presentation if it is saved to a CD. This allows you to only take the CD to a meeting and use just the CD to make your presentation. The viewer has been improved with improved graphics and fidelity.

2) This saving of the Power Point presentation to a CD is done with a new Power Point feature called Package for CD. When it saves the presentation to the CD, it includes all supporting files, even linked files, as well as the viewer.

3) You can now show any movie clips you attach to the Power Point presentation in full screen mode. If you use Microsoft Media Player version 8 or later, you also get support for additional media formats.

4) A new Slide Show toolbar has been added that can be used by the presenter during a presentation. It is designed in such a way as to not be obvious to the audience, and it gives you easy access to navigation buttons, ink annotation tools, pen and highlighter options, and the Slide Show menu.

5) Smart tag support, which already exists in Word and Excel, has been added to Power Point 2003.

6) Bitmaps have been made larger and have better resolution when exported.

7) Power Point 2003 also has the new Document Workspaces feature, described in point 3 under the Word 2003 section.

8) Excel 2003 now has the new Information Rights Management feature, described in point 4 under the Word 2003 section.

Outlook 2003:

1) There is now a new navigation pane, which makes it very easy to get to all parts of Outlook 2003.

2) There is also a new Go menu, making it easier to switch between panes in the navigation pane area.

3) There is a redesigned Preview Pane which now lays out messages vertically. Along with that is a new multi-line layout. When these two items are used together you can see twice as much as you could see with the old Preview Pane.

4) There is a new email feature that allows you to group email messages together by “conversation”. This allows you to create related “threads” of emails.

5) You can now view multiple calendars at the same time. So if you need to schedule a meeting, for example, you could display each person’s calendar next to your own, thus allowing you to determine at a single glance when everybody would be free for the meeting.

6) On the email editor, there is now a single email toolbar instead of the formatting and standard toolbars. This gives you extra space.

7) If you have installed Microsoft SharePoint Services on your server, there is a new, more efficient way to handle an email attachment of a Microsoft Office document. Now when you do the attachment, an Attachment Options task pane will appear. The default option on the task pane is to send the attachment with the email. But if you select the Shared Attachments option, the attachment will be sent to a Document Workspace area on your server in the Share Point Services area. This gives you all the advantages of the Document Workspace area, as described in point 3 under the Word 2003 section.

Office Strategic Direction

Office 2003:

The two major, strategic improvements in Office 2003 involve XML and collaboration.

Word, Excel, and Power Point make greater use of XML. Thus data in these documents can be more easily freed from its environment and transmitted to other Office, non-Office, or non-Microsoft applications for use there. For example, a Word document could be formatted as an Order Entry Form. When the user fills in the document the data could then be formatted as an Order Record through the use of XML, and could then be transmitted up to an Oracle database and inserted into an Oracle Order Table. Or that same Order Record could be transmitted to an Access Order Table.

If Office 2003 is tied into a server running Microsoft SharePoint Service, workers can collaborate jointly on Word, Excel, and Power Point documents. By sending the document as an email attachment to the SharePoint Service on the server, the document is automatically set up in a collaborative workspace, which other workers can access. The document originator has total control over who can access the workspace and the document, change the document, change only certain sections of the document, and so forth. Moreover, users do not have to leave Word, Excel, or Power Point to access the document on the SharePoint Service, since those three applications now have a Work Space task pane. SharePoint itself handles version control, edit locks, and so forth.

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