Microsoft Excel is the spreadsheet program that's part of Microsoft Office. I was an outsource support tech for Excel forty hours a week for two years, ending in mid-2003 when Microsoft moved all their tech support offshore. These pages are by no means intended to be the last word about Excel, just some pointers on things Excel users seem to need help with a lot. The discussion here assumes basic familiarity with Excel and Windows.
| Internal number | Suite name | Module names |
Release date | End of support |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office 7 | Office 95 | Word 7.0 | Aug 1995 | Don't care | 32-bit Office version to go with Windows 95. |
| Office 8 | Office 97 | Word 97 | Dec 1996 | Feb 2002 | Introduced grammar checking, and Clippy the annoying Office Assistant. |
| Office 9 | Office 2000 | Word 2000 | Jan 1999 | Jul 2009 | Many new features including adaptive menus; last version to support Win95. |
| Office 10 | Office XP | Word 2002 | May 2001 | Jul 2011 | Smart Tags, Help in task pane; Office Assistant turned off by default.¹ |
| Office 11 | Office 2003 | Word 2003 | Nov 2003 | Jan 2014 | SDI-like interface; Office Assistant removed from the product. |
| Office 12 | Office 2007 | Word 2007 | Jan 2007 | Jan 2017? | Unpopular XML formats and rearranged Fluent/Ribbon interface.² |
| Office 14³ | Office 2010 | Word 2010 | Jun 2010 | 2020? | Free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint; still has Ribbon interface. |
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