REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 25, 1997 — With close to 5 million Microsoft® Office 97 licenses sold to date, Microsoft Corp. today announced new tools and solutions designed to help those organizations now migrating to Office 97. These new tools, including converters, dedicated Web sites, and documentation, will make it easier for organizations to take advantage of Office’s new Internet and intranet capabilities, collaboration tools and productivity enhancements.
“Organizations look to Office 97 to help reduce support costs, increase control of the desktop and improve end users’ productivity,” said Dennis Tevlin, director of marketing, desktop applications division at Microsoft. “The migration tools help ensure that our corporate customers are provided with the easiest transition to Office 97.”
Microsoft has provided a full range of tools to help minimize the organizational costs of deploying and maintaining Office 97. The tools that are available focus on three key migration areas: planning and deployment, coexistence, and training and support.
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Planning and deployment tools. Tools created to help IS managers plan migration, deploy and update Office 97 include these:
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The new Migration Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/office/migration/, an online resource, includes important information an administrator would need to understand Office 97 enhancements, migration issues, available tools and additional resources. It also includes links to the Office Developer Forum, which includes detailed information on converting software solutions built with previous versions of Office to work in Office 97.
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The new Microsoft Office 97 Resource Kit provides more than 1,000 pages of information on deploying and managing Office.
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The Network Installation Wizard provides an automated way of remotely administering and customizing installation options for groups of users.
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Coexistence and management tools. Various tools in Office 97 provide flexible options that allow administrators to determine how their users will coexist during migration periods:
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Default file “save as” uses System Policy Templates to allow IS to remotely set the default file “save as” to a previous version to allow users in mixed environments to work together throughout the migration period.
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Installable file converters
and “dual file” formats (save as both new and old version of a document in one file) allow Office 97 users to create highest-quality documents that can still be read by users of previous versions. -
The enhanced Word Save as Word 6.0/95 converter , to be distributed by the end of the first quarter of 1997 at http://www.microsoft.com and through Microsoft Select, addresses the current administrator concerns regarding file size and user confusion when working with files currently saved as Word
6.0/95 format.
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Training and support tools. Tools for providing users with information and support during the transition to Office 97 include the following:
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Office Assistant provides context-sensitive, proactive user assistance that adapts to the way the user works.
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Office Online Support, Web-based support and technical information available from the Help menu in all Office programs, provides easy access to common questions and answers and public newsgroups of savvy Office 97 users.
“Using the tools and support available from Microsoft made our migration easy,” said Olav Hanrath, technology coordinator at Ontario Hydro. “With tools such as the Network Installation Wizard, we were able to put our users in the environment they needed and keep our costs to a minimum.”
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