Office
& Mac Resources |
Microsoft Office: A Short Background Microsoft Office is an application suite with business-class applications, which are useful in both the home and office setttings. The Office package originated on the Macintosh, though soon enough Microsoft ported it to the Windows side when it proved to be overwhelmingly successful. The package includes three core components available on both operating systems: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Word is an aptly-named powerful word-processor. It has evolved from a simple word processing application into a world-class publishing solution. Excel is a program for creating spreadsheets. I, personally, know little about Excel, but even I have found its tremendous usefulness in terms of mathematics. New versions also include simple forms of list management, which can also come in handy. PowerPoint is powerful software for creating multimedia presentations. The program is designed to create linear presentations, though with Visual Basic add-ins and other tools it can be used to create interactive presentations. Other components can be found in the Windows and Macintosh versions. The Windows versions of Office include a personal information manager called Outlook, which functions as a personal client or as an Exchange Server client. Mac Office has a similar tool called Entourage, which is also compatible with Exchange Server. Access, OneNote, InfoPath, Visio, FrontPage, MapPoint, and Project are some of the tools included with the professional editions for Windows. Visit the Microsoft Office sites for more information: |
September 2007 |