Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is an office suite of desktop applications, servers and services for Microsoft Windows and OS X operating systems. It was first announced by Bill Gates of Microsoft on 1 August 1988 at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Over the years, Office applications have grown substantially closer with shared features such as a common spell checker, OLE data integration and Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software under the Office Business Applications brand. On 10 July 2012, Softpedia reported that Office is used by over a billion people worldwide. The current versions are Office 2013 for Windows, released on 11 October 2012; and Office 2011 for OS X, released 26 October 2010. On 24 October 2012, the RTM final code of Office 2013 Professional Plus was released to TechNet and MSDN subscribers for download. On 15 November 2012, the 60-day trial version of Office 2013 Professional Plus was released for download. A touch optimised version of Microsoft Office is available pre-installed on Windows RT tablets. A mobile version of Office, Office Mobile, is available for free on Windows Phone, iOS (with separate versions for both iPhones and iPads), and Android. A web-based version of Office called Office Online, (formerly Office Web Apps) is also available. Microsoft has stated that it plans to create a version of Office for Android tablets ("and other popular platforms") as well. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office 2016 will be released in the second half of 2015 Most versions of Microsoft Office (including Office 97 and later) use their own widget set and do not exactly match the native operating system. This is most apparent in Microsoft Office XP and 2003, where the standard menus were replaced with a colored flat looking, shadowed menu style. The user interface of a particular version of Microsoft Office often heavily influences a subsequent version of Microsoft Windows. For example, the toolbar, colored buttons and the gray-colored 3D look of Office 4.3 were added to Windows 95, and the ribbon, introduced in Office 2007, has been incorporated into several programs bundled with Windows 7 and later. Users of Microsoft Office may access external data via connection-specifications saved in Office Data Connection (.odc) files. Both Windows and Office use service packs to update software. Office had non-cumulative service releases, which were discontinued after Office 2000 Service Release 1. Past versions of Office often contained Easter eggs. For example, Excel 97 contained a reasonably functional flight-simulator. Office XP and later do not have any Easter eggs, in compliance with Trustworthy Computing guidelines.Microsoft supports Office for the Windows and OS X platforms, as well as mobile versions for Windows Phone, Android and iOS platforms. Beginning with Mac Office 4.2, the OS X and Windows versions of Office share the same file format, and are interoperable. Visual Basic for Applications support was dropped in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, then reintroduced in Office for Mac 2011. Microsoft tried in the mid-1990s to port Office to RISC processors such as NEC/MIPS and IBM/PowerPC, but they met problems such as memory access being hampered by data structure alignment requirements. Microsoft Word 97 and Excel 97 however did ship for the DEC Alpha platform. Difficulties in porting Office may have been a factor in discontinuing Windows NT on non-Intel platforms.[33] Stuart Cohen, CEO of Open Source Development Labs, conjectured in 2006 that Microsoft would eventually release a Linux port of Office, which occurred via Microsoft Office Mobile for Android phones (OS 4.0 or later) in 2013 and tablets (OS 4.4 or later) in 2015. Office is also available for iOS, another Unix-like platform. Office for Windows Phone and the older Windows Mobile are distinguished from the main Windows version, but Office 2016 for Windows 10 will consist of one Universal App compatible with both main and mobile versions of Windows.