Microsoft Office 97 Released to Manufacturing

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 19, 1996 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a major new release of its flagship software package, Microsoft® Office – the world’s best-selling productivity suite. Office 97 is the first suite that fully integrates the ease of intelligent applications with the power of the Web. By making Internet technology an integral part of the suite, Office 97 makes it easy to create and publish Web documents, find information and collaborate with others on the Internet or a corporate intranet. Featured in this new version of Microsoft Office is the Microsoft Outlook
™
desktop information manager, which provides an easy way for users to organize and track all of their desktop information and communicate with others.

“Office 97 is our most significant release of the suite to date,”
said Bill Gates, chairman and CEO of Microsoft.

We’ve invested nearly three years of development time and over 25,000 hours of usability testing to deliver the new capabilities our customers have requested.

Office 97 marks a great step forward in productivity applications, bringing to business users the benefits of the Internet plus the results of our ongoing research in areas such as natural language processing, user-interface design and software componentization.

  1. ™ Office 97 includes a host of improvements based on IntelliSense technology that enable the software to watch what the user is doing and automatically produce the desired result. Innovations such as the new Office Assistant provide personalized assistance in the form of advice, interactive Help and tips. Background grammar checking in Microsoft Word finds and fixes common grammatical errors as users type. Formula AutoCorrect in Microsoft Excel automatically corrects common formula mistakes, and natural language formulas let users build formulas using their own words. The Save-as-HTML Wizard in PowerPoint automatically creates complete Web presentations including navigation controls, frames and animations that take advantage of the PowerPoint Animation Player browser extension. Office Art is a new set of powerful drawing tools shared across all the Office applications, making it easy for novice and experienced users to create drawings and graphics. Office 97 also takes advantage of the new Microsoft IntelliMouse
    ™
    pointing device, which makes it easier to scroll and navigate through documents with the roll of a wheel.

  2. Office 97 integrates Web functionality based on Internet standards into each application to enable users to take full advantage of the Web. With Web technology in Office 97, users can easily save Office 97 documents in HTML, publish documents directly to intranet servers, insert hyperlinks into their documents, use Web FindFast to locate Office or HTML documents on their intranet, and use the new Web Toolbar in Office 97 to navigate through online documents. Office 97 also provides powerful new collaboration capabilities that make it easier for users to work together on documents, track changes, and save multiple versions of a document in a single file. With support for Active Documents, users can open Office files directly from within Microsoft Internet Explorer and use the full power of applications such as Word and Microsoft Excel without leaving their browser.

  3. With more than 1 million developers building custom solutions, Office is currently the most popular development platform after the Windows operating system. Office 97 delivers many new enhancements. For example, Office 97 includes more than 500 programmable objects; a new forms package, Microsoft Forms with ActiveX
    ™Control support; and the Visual Basic programming system, Applications Edition (VBA), version 5.0, which includes the Visual Basic integrated development environment. Visual Basic, Applications Edition has been added to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and both applications expose new object models. Office 97 also provides support for Visual Basic, Scripting Edition, programmable Web links and improved external data access connectivity. With these enhancements, Microsoft Office 97 makes it easier to develop a broad range of business solutions that connect to all kinds of information, including server-side databases, messaging systems, the Internet and corporate intranets.

  4. In line with the recently announced
    “Zero Administration”
    initiative for Windows, which is designed to allow companies to reduce the cost of owning PCs significantly, Office 97 provides several new and improved tools to minimize the organizational costs of upgrading. The new Office Upgrade Wizard, for example, makes it easy to maximize free disk space during installation by automatically removing unnecessary files left over from previous installations. The enhanced Network Installation Wizard allows administrators to create custom installation scripts, so different users can have the exact functionality they need. The Network Installation Wizard also includes the option of installing Office from a server or a local PC. The new System Policies templates let administrators establish default application configurations for their users, such as setting a common default
    “file save”
    format so that all users can share files even if they are using different versions of the product.

  1. on CD-ROM includes Word 97, Microsoft Excel 97, PowerPoint 97, Outlook 97, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Camcorder for capturing and distributing screen movies, and Microsoft Photo Editor. In addition, users get one free month of Internet connection time through MSN
    ™
    , The Microsoft Network.*

  2. on CD-ROM includes Word 97, Microsoft Excel 97, PowerPoint 97, Outlook 97, Microsoft Access 97, Microsoft Bookshelf Basics, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Camcorder for capturing and distributing screen movies, and Microsoft Photo Editor. In addition, users get one free month of Internet connection time through MSN.*

  3. on CD-ROM features Word 97, Microsoft Excel 97, Publisher 97, Outlook 97, Automap Streets Plus, Small Business Financial Manager and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In addition, users get one free month of Internet connection time through MSN* and other tools and information to make it easy to start doing business on the Internet.

  4. includes the same CD that is included in Office 97, Professional Edition, plus developer tools, printed documentation, distribution rights and sample code. Developer tools include the royalty-free Microsoft Access runtime, integration tools for Microsoft Access and the Visual SourceSafe
    ™
    version control system (acquired separately), Setup Wizard, Replication Manager and ActiveX Controls.

  1. Scheduled to be available in retail stores Jan. 16, 1997. Estimated retail price (ERP) for version upgrades is $209**. ERP for upgrades from non-Microsoft suites or desktop applications is $249. ERP for new users is $499.

  2. Scheduled to be available in retail stores Jan. 16, 1997. ERP for version upgrades is $309**. ERP for upgrades from non-Microsoft suites or desktop applications is $349. ERP for new users is $599.

  3. Scheduled to be available in retail stores in March 1997. ERP for version upgrades is $209**. ERP for upgrades from non-Microsoft suites or desktop applications is $249. ERP for new users is $499.

  4. Scheduled to be available in retail stores in March 1997. ERP for version upgrades is $499**. ERP for upgrades from non-Microsoft suites or desktop applications is $539. ERP for new users is $799.

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