Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity programs created or purchased by Microsoft and developed for Microsoft Windows, and Apple Computer's Mac OS and Mac OS X operating systems. As well as the core office applications, the Microsoft Office brand includes associated servers and Web-based services. Recent versions of Office are now called the "Office system" rather than the "Office suite" to reflect the fact that they include servers as well.
Office made its first appearance in 1989 on the Macintosh,[1] with a version for Windows following it in 1990.[citation needed] It was initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications that were previously marketed and sold separately. The main selling point was that buying the bundle was substantially cheaper than buying each of the individual applications on their own. The first version of Office contained Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Additionally, a "Pro" version of Office included Microsoft Access and Schedule Plus. Over the years the Office applications have grown substantially closer together from a technical standpoint, sharing features such as a common spell checker, OLE data integration, and the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications scripting language. Microsoft also positions Office as a development platform for line-of-business software.
The current versions are Office 2003 for Windows, launched October 21, 2003[2], and Office 2004 for Macintosh, released May 19, 2004[3]. Office 2007, the next version for Windows, was announced on February 15, 2006[4], was released on November 30, 2006 for businesses via the Volume Licence and MSDN channels, and will be on general release to the public in January 2007[5]. It features a radically different user interface and a new XML-based primary file format.

Versions for Apple Macintosh OS

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh logo.
Office 1 (Word 3, etc.): Released 1990.
Office 2 (Word 4, etc.): Released 1992.
Office 3 (Word 5, Excel 4, PowerPoint 3, etc.): Released 1993.
Office 4.2 (The last 68K version; Word 6.0, Excel 5, PowerPoint 4, etc.): Released 1994.
Office 4.2.1 (The first Power Mac-aware version; Word 6.0.1, Excel 5, etc.): Released June 2, 1994.
Office 98 (Word/Excel/PowerPoint 98(v8.0), etc.): Released March 15, 1998.
Office 2001 (Word 2001, etc.): Released October 11, 2000.
Office v. X (The first Mac OS X/Aqua edition; Word X, etc.): Current version 10.1.8, Released November 19, 2001.
Office 2004 (Word 2004, etc.): Current version 11.3.1, Released May 11, 2004.
Both Office v. X and 2004 Standard Edition run non-natively on Intel Macs through the Rosetta Emulation layer. Microsoft does not intend to update Office 2004 for Intel Macs, but has announced that the next version of Office for Mac will have universal binaries capable of running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.