Introducing Microsoft Office XP
addition to recognising names from Outlook, Office will also recognize other
common names, as well as dates, addresses, stock symbols, etc. Clicking on any of
these will bring up a Smart Tag menu with appropriate options. For example, type
MSFT into a document and it will be recognised as Microsoft's stock symbol. Click
on it, and you can look up the current price online.
Another new feature is the refreshable Web query. Paste some information from a
Web table into a Word or Excel file, for example, and click the Recalc button, and it
will go to the correct Web page and get the latest version of that data. Ideal for
checking your stock portfolio with Nasdaq, or perusing the intranet to find out
what's new on the canteen menu.
Revolution?
In some ways, Office XP is a revolutionary step, yet in other ways it can be seen
more as a gentle evolution. On the revolution side of the equation, Microsoft is billing
Office XP as the start of the .NET revolution. No one is claiming that this product is
Office.NET, but it's a fair bet that this product, both on the surface and underneath,
is much closer to Office.NET than Office 2000 ever was. On the evolution side, Office
XP now features a rudimentary form of copy protection in the form of a registration
scheme which ties the CD to the particular PC upon which it is installed. More details
of this later. Also, Office XP takes away some of the work of the tired and stressed
support person by helping users find solutions to problems online, or recovering
information lost in a system crash. Again, more later.
Look And Feel
Office XP looks and feels very much like Office 2000. Anyone who's used 2000 will
be sufficiently at home with XP that they will be able to use their most common
features immediately with little or no retraining. As for the file formats, these are
mostly identical between 2000 and XP, so users will be able to share files easily.
Access has a new file format that allows more efficient access to large database files,
but this is optional you can choose whether or not to convert your MDB files.
Another notable first is that PowerPoint now has the ability to save a file with a
password to protect it from being accessed by unauthorised users. This of course
will lead to problems opening password enabled PowerPoint XP files under Pow
erPoint 2000.
On the subject of passwords, there is a new optional high strength encryption
facility in Office XP, based on CryptoAPI, which will make it much harder to break.
Currently the password protection added to files by Office 2000 can be cracked in
Task Panes are
additional menus that
appear on the right hand
side of the screen and
provide links to
whatever Office thinks
you might want.
Creating a SharePoint Team Services site.
Update 151:June 2001
PC Support Advisor
File: R1169.2
page 4
Review:Software
www.pcsupportadvisor.com
< Next page >
New! The best sites for quality inkjet printer cartridges and the best sites for cheap inkjet cartridges