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MS OFFICE NEW FEATURES FOR 2003
This is a reprint from the February 2004 issue of TOE (The Outer Edge)
By Carl Bailey
This is a review of installing and using Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition, which was obtained as a review copy. My operating system is Windows XP with Service Pack 1, 384 MB of RAM and 40 GB hard drive.
When I started the installation, it detected that I had a previous version of MS Office 2000, and it asked me if I wanted to keep or delete this version. I chose to have it delete the old version. For some reason it wanted to install the new MS Office 2003 in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Frontpage2000. I changed it to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office directory where my old version of MS Office 2000 was installed. The program started the deleting and installing with no more questions. The whole thing was fast and no problems.
The first disk of MS Office Professional Edition 2003 installed MS Office 2003 Tools, Access 2003, Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003, Publisher 2003 and Word 2003. There is a second disk that will install Business Contact Manger for MS Office 2003. However, before you can install Business Contact Manger for MS Office 2003 you have to have installed MS .Net Framework 1.1. This is a 23.1 MB download. For the time being I'm going to hold off on installing this. From what I can tell this is strictly for Business use. It can help you manage business contacts, track customer information and market your products and service, allowing you to streamline the way you do business. Since I'm an old retired federal employee, I don't want to install and never use it again.
The first thing that you need to do is buy a book that shows how to use the various programs. No book comes with the program. The help is also very good to try to find out what you're trying to accomplish.
Access 2003: Access comes only with the Professional Edition of MS Office 2003.
So if you want Access you can't buy the cheaper editions like the Student & Teacher edition. I normally use the database program Approach that comes with Lotus SmartSuite. This program looks similar to Approach. A new feature that has been added is "Back Up." You can now back up the current database before making any major changes. The backup will be saved in the default file location where you save your normal files. You can also enable automatic error checking for common errors in forms and reports. This will point out errors in printing and will help you identify and correct them. This program is like all new programs - you have to get in and play with it in order to know how to use it.
Excel 2003: As with the above program I normally use Lotus 123 that comes with Lotus SmartSuite. I've used Excel some but not enough to be an expert. This version looks the same as the older 2000 version. A new feature that has been added is List functionality. In this you can create lists in your file to associate and act upon a group of related data. When you specify a range as a list, you can manage and analyze the data independent of other data outside of the list. You also have the ability to publish a List on a SharePoint team Web site. You can now also work directly with the XML elements within the worksheet.
Outlook 2003: This is the program that is the most different for me personally.
I have used Outlook Express as my mail program since I started going online.
Outlook 2003 clearly received the greatest overhaul I've been told. It configured and set up pretty easily. It lets you import your address book from other programs. It also imports all of your rules to manage your various e-mail accounts. I did this for OutLook Express, and it added my entire address book under Contacts. When I tried to create a new message I had a lot of trouble using my address book. I finally figured out how to make it look at my address book from the To: or CC: line of a new message. This took a little bit of looking through the help section. Although Outlook isn't the perfect mail client and scheduler, this version is substantially easier to use and comes with a lot of new features. It groups your messages from Today, Yesterday, and Last Week and so on. The ability to flag messages with a single click (something Outlook Express already does) makes it easy to mark important messages. And best of all, you can customize Outlook's Search Folders to create new views. Outlook finally incorporates antispam measures, including a built-in filter and the ability to build or even import lists of accepted (whitelist) and junk mail (blacklist) domains. Outlook not only identifies mail as junk mail, but it also automatically tosses that junk into a new Junk E-mail folder or, if you want, will automatically delete it. You can now capture any block of text with address and e-mail information as a new contact by pressing Ctrl-C twice. You'd better learn to like Outlook, though, because Microsoft says it has no current plans to support Outlook Express beyond Version 6. Plenty of users like me will be stumped by Outlook for a while. Like all programs it takes time to learn to use it.
The Calendar part of Outlook is an excellent feature that Outlook Express didn't have. I'm starting to use this more and more. You can set up your Appointments and the Reminder will notify you at what ever time you tell it.
You can also print out the Calendar that will show all your appointments.
Publisher 2003: Publisher 2003 offers an expanded selection of publication designs and publication types to help you create professional-looking publications. It has added 10 Master Design Sets so you can select from a total of 45 professionally designed Master Design Sets when creating your publications. Master Design Sets enable you to apply a consistent design and identity to a range of common publications. It also has enhanced layout and graphics features to give you better control over how your design will look.
Word 2003: Word now allows you to save documents in XML format. Word is more or less the same as its predecessors. Word's toolbars and task panes, for example, look a bit flashier and more colorful than in past versions, but that's the biggest change. To make digital documents easier to read, Reading Mode (activated by the Start Reading toolbar button) attempts to reformat your documents to look like printed pages - sort of like Adobe Acrobat. But in Reading Mode, unlike in Acrobat Reader or the former Print Preview, your documents remain editable. Word now includes a format-locking feature so you can lock down any document's formatting and style or restrict the number of formatting styles others can apply - creating, in essence, a template. This should appeal to companies that want all official documents to have the same look and feel.
PowerPoint and Access now offer up SmartTags, too, those sometimes-annoying (but usually handy) icons that automatically appear to mark such things as addresses, names, and other selected data, as Excel and Word have done in the past.
PowerPoint 2003: With PowerPoint 2003 the viewer is improved, and you can now package the slides for CD using the Package for CD to distribute the slides.
Package for CD allows you to package your presentations and all of the supporting files, including linked files, and automatically run your presentations from the CD. PowerPoint 2003 support additional media formats, including ASX, WMX, M3U, WVX, WAX, and WMA. You can now write directly into the PowerPoint slides on tablet pc. This makes creating slides so much simpler than before.
Conclusion: It is not possible to list every possible application in the Office 2003 suite. What I have done is to point out the new features of common applications that I use.
I use Outlook 2003 every day and I noticed that the speed improvements compared to Outlook Express. Microsoft has pumped lots of new features into the applications of the Office suite. This is definitely one up from the earlier versions. I especially like the idea of the spam filter, which is incorporated within Outlook 2003.
This has been heavily used on my Hotmail account, and I have a nice and compact inbox with no more - well, less - spam. This is really nice. If you are an Office 2002 user and if you use a tablet pc, this upgrade is well worth the upgrade.
The only thing that seems to have been left out is a PocketPC edition of the applications bundled within Office. Well, that could be possible in future editions.
Overall, it is a nice experience using the new Office Professional 2003 especially the new features.
