Microsoft Office 2000 Beta 1 Ships to 20,000 Customers, Providing Tools to Make the Web Work for Users

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 10, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the shipment of Office 2000 beta 1 to a record 20,000 customers and solution providers, providing an early opportunity for evaluation of the next version of the world’s best-selling productivity suite.

Microsoft® Office 2000 will be the first suite that makes the Web work for customers by enabling any Office user to naturally create content for the Web and save it directly to a Web site without any file conversion or use of special tools. Office 2000 will breathe life into intranets that are merely static, one-way publishing systems, enabling a collaborative environment for document creation and editing.

As a part of making two-way Webs a reality, Microsoft today also announced that Microsoft FrontPage 2000, the upcoming version of the world’s best-selling Web site creation and management tool, will be included in a new higher-end edition of Office 2000.

“We’re excited to provide so many customers with beta 1 at this early stage so they can begin evaluating some of the great new Web collaboration features in Office 2000,”
said Steven Sinofsky, general manager of Office at Microsoft.
“We’ve made some big investments so the Web will really work for our customers, without asking them to learn a host of new tools.”

Teams using Office 2000 will be able to create and post documents to the Web easily, then use the FrontPage 2000 Web site creation and management tool to manage their entire site. Together these products provide a complete solution for creating and managing Web sites. Microsoft has designed FrontPage 2000 to provide customers with a seamless experience that is integrated with Office 2000. Features such as shared Office menus and toolbars, combined with an integrated Editor and Explorer, help enable Office users to feel comfortable immediately using FrontPage. In addition to full Web site creation and management capabilities, FrontPage 2000 will provide robust Web collaboration support with features such as page-level check-in and check-out, as well as easy-to-use Web security management.

“Learning a new tool makes Web content creation unrealistic for many of our employees. Office 2000 will empower individual users to publish and share their documents on the Web,”
said Steve McNaughton, computer specialist at Quaker State Research Division.
“Because FrontPage 2000 has a familiar Office interface and many shared features, our employees will be able to create and manage their department’s intranet site without learning new skills.”

Because of the critical role that both Office and intranets play in organizations, Microsoft has dramatically expanded the scope of the release of beta 1 so that a large number of customers can begin early evaluation of the next version. Office 2000 beta 1 recipients will also be part of the FrontPage 2000 beta program, scheduled for this fall.

Office 2000 is being designed to help customers get better results by turning their information into an asset. The desktop suite will make the Web work for its users, streamlining the process of working with people and information.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people

to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.

Microsoft and FrontPage are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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