Microsoft Office 2003

Microsoft Office 2003

Microsoft Office 2003 — new and improved? Do you really need to upgrade? Not necessarily. I am not suggesting it’s not a fine product. (Hey, so I am afraid to dis Bill. Sue me.) It’s just not much of an improvement over Office XP — and certainly not, in my opinion, worth paying to upgrade from Office XP. If you are buying new, it’s a fine product.

What does it offer? Essentially, it offers a new look and feel, a couple of new applications and some real improvements in the Microsoft e-mail application, Outlook.

It seems that Microsoft has eschewed offering new “features” in favor of concentrating on collaborative working. To my horror, however, is the added ability to send “instant messages” from within shared documents or Shared Workspaces (another new feature) to indicate one’s presence and, perhaps, desire to initiate a conversation. (For the record, I hate instant messaging as much as telemarketing calls.) Shared Workspaces allow a document to be shared within a group so members are alerted when the document is updated. Microsoft implemented an information rights management feature that helps protect information from being distributed or altered except by authorized persons. You can set access rules, such as giving access only to a specified group, expiration dates for documents, and limit or prevent document changes. You even can assign portions of documents to different people to be edit-enabled. Of course, all this only works if the other users have Office 2003 Professional.

Microsoft also added a page view feature to Word, which makes paging through a document like turning pages in a book. I didn’t care for it.

A newly added application is called InfoPath. Essentially, it supports the design of forms for entering data, and the ability to gather the forms’ data easily, such as in summary tables in an Excel spreadsheet. Repeating tables allow you to enter just the correct variable number of line items desired for, say, an expense account report. You can apply data validation rules and show different views of one or more data sources, integrating the information from a variety of office applications easily. Also, you can work offline and online, and there is no loss of functionality.

Outlook has a whole new look to it. My favorite feature is having a small translucent image of the first few lines of a new incoming e-mail message appear briefly and unobtrusively on-screen. You can glance at it and decide to ignore the message for now, or determine it’s important and interrupt what you are doing to read it. Junk e-mail filtering is enhanced, but you still have to check the junk mail folder periodically to make certain something important did not get swept in by mistake.

If you have a Tablet PC, or like taking notes on a digital notepad, OneNote is a new application offered for use (but not included) with Office 2003. Using a pen-like input device, you can draw, cut and paste areas, insert sound and images, and, more importantly, organize your notes for more effective retrieval with searchable notes. Just imagine your trial e-notebook with a blue screen of death — it gives me the willies.

For the Internet aficionados, Microsoft enhanced its support for native eXtensible Markup Language. It retains file format compatibility with previous versions of Word.

So, what do you buy if you want to get Office 2003? The Professional Edition is $499 or $329 to upgrade. This includes the basic suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, as well as Publisher, FrontPage, Access and the new InfoPath. Various other permutations (Small Business, Student and Teacher, and Standard Editions) are available for slightly less, with fewer applications, but the value of lost applications is greater than the amount saved. Just make sure you get what you want. It can be confusing.

Microsoft Corp.

www.microsoft.com

Price: Professional Edition sells for $499, or $329 for an upgrade

Reviewed by Daniel S. Coolidge, a patent and intellectual property attorney and frequent lecturer and writer on legal technology issues.

Feb/Mar '04 Issue

PROS
A new look and feel, a couple of new applications and improvements in Outlook.

CONS
Not a huge improvement over Office XP, or worth the upgrade price.

VERDICT
Good product but not enough improvement over Office XP to merit upgrading to get the new features. Good package otherwise, great collaborative features.