Popular Products > Computers > Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is by far the most widely used office software in the world and works with Microsoft Windows as well as Mac OS X. After the operating system (OS), the application that is the most important is the office suite as it helps you to create and edit data, flowcharts, documents and presentations essential for professional as well as personal purposes.

The Microsoft Office suite was first released by Microsoft in 1989 for the Mac OS. This was followed a year later by a version for its Windows OS. This initial bundle included Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and a Pro version including Microsoft Access and Schedule Plus. The latest version of the suite has many versions including: Office Standard 2007, Office Home and Student 2007, Office Mobile, Office Small Business 2007, Office Professional 2007, Office Professional Plus 2007, Office Enterprise 2007 and Office Ultimate 2007. As is clear from their names, each version caters for a different user. There is also Office 2008 for Mac OS X.

Microsoft Office has come a long way since its first release and the Ultimate edition of its suite today comprises Access 2007, Accounting Express 2007, Excel 2007, InfoPath 2007, Groove 2007, OneNote 2007, Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, PowerPoint 2007, Publisher 2007 and Word 2007. Then there are other products such as Accounting 2008, Project 2007, Sharepoint Designer 2007 and Visio 2007, which are also grouped under Microsoft Office Desktop programs.

Here is a brief description of the most popular applications:

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation software, used to create slideshows incorporating text, images, videos, graphs and similar objects.

Microsoft Office Word is the most popular word processing software. The latest version also has XML support.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program used mainly to prepare accounting flowcharts, graphs and pi charts.

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager (PIM) and email communication software and includes an email client, calendar, task manager and address book.

Office software has been mostly dominated by Microsoft and it remains the overriding leader in this sector.