Powerful Office Productivity program

Author's Rating:

Pros: Powerful, has many time saving features

Cons: Most people don't spend time figuring out its powers

The Bottom Line: 
Very powerful program that encompasses practically all needs for an office. It does require some training/discipline to learn its more powerful features. Take a class or get a book!

Author's Review
Office 2003 consists of four programs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. The 2003 version is not considerably different than version 2002 but I do like it more in certain ways. It does work with the Internet a lot more. The task pane that we get on the right side of the screen upon starting the program has become an integral part of Office. Some of the functions have been made much more complex (complicated?) but this task pane does help to simplify some of the functions.

The Internet can supply templates for your documents in any of the programs. In addition, it also provides you with tutorials and other items you may find helpful. However, if you are the average person who works in an office, you most likely don’t have the time to spend researching all these extras. It is suggested that you spend a few minutes a few times a week to explore the functions so that you can improve your productivity.

As one who has used technology for over 20 years now, the computer has helped me to simplify my life in automating many repetitive tasks. If you are doing anything that is repetitive or time consuming, chances are there is a simpler way to do the task.

The Help continues to be dreadful. It is like Jeopardy in that you have to know the answer before you ask the question. It does include online help which only compounds the problem. You may have to click through about a dozen answer screens before you solve the problem!

A brief summary of the programs follows below with a few comments about their improvements.

Word
I really have not seen that many changes in Word. It does have more templates that you can get from the Internet. Clip Art is even more powerful. It works with voice/speech programming more effectively. Mail Merge has become more complex. Yes it is more powerful, but I found the versions before 2002 to be much easier to use. I find it sluggish in that you have to insert each field separately and cannot just click around the document with the toolbar. That should be fixed.

Working with document protection has also changed. There are many additional features. In earlier versions, all you had to do was turn it on. If you wanted to protect it further, just put in a password. Now, if you want to do that, you have to re-insert the program disk so that you can re-install another feature.

The multiple clipboard is great in that you get to see a few words of text (or the image) that is contained in it.

PowerPoint
This one is my favorite in its improvements. Yes, it has a lot more effects added for animations for your slide shows. Make sure you don’t spend too much time fooling around with these, they can detract from a presentation but some of them are very nice. You can do slide shows, dissolves, credits that roll down the screen, etc. which are all very nice.

What is also very good to have now is that you can get templates online so that you are using stuff that is a bit more original. I do recommend that you create your own templates with photos, original art, etc. so that your presentations have more impact. However, the bottom line is that content is the most important.

Excel
The arithmetic is about the same as it has been since the first spreadsheets came out over 25 years ago. When doing tasks, you will get smart tags after pasting or appearing in formulas. They can be a bit confusing at times. You get these little green triangles in cells on occasion and when you hold the mouse over the cell, there is a box that you can go into to decide what the problem is. If you want to shut off an entire range of cells, it has to be done manually! You cannot do that globally. The user can go into options to shut off this function.

Pivot tables are different than in earlier versions and that can be a bit frustrating if you’ve just mastered it in a previous version. Aggravating! Pivot tables are a wonderful tool and can be useful but are very frustrating to learn.

There are prompts when doing advanced functions such as the PMT, etc. The tool tip that appears on the screen when doing the formulas can be very nice to use as it shows in bold what argument needs to be done. This is good if you don’t want to use the Insert Function dialogue box. (it has now been renamed from the Paste Function which was one of the most worst names that could have been used.)

Access
There are features that have been added to this program (and all of the above) for protection from viruses/macros. When opening a file in Access, you will get a few prompts that can be more than a bit confusing. Pay careful attention to them or it may disable some of the functions in it. Microsoft has been merely reactive to the problems with viruses that seem to get embedded in files. This is most prevalent in Access and Excel which use macros extensively.

Again, it has templates on the web that you can use to crate more sophisticated databases. Many of the changes that have been done to Access have done in the back end of the program which the average user will not notice.

Access is a very complex database program which is powerful, but is also challenging to learn. It requires a lot of practice to get competent with it.

Outlook
The email program has been improved vastly in many ways. It helps users to filter out spam, put their mail into special folders, create rules so that mail can be forwarded into folders, other recipients, special auto responders created. This one is definitely a better version. It also includes address books, scheduling, calendars, to do lists, post it notes and many other features that can download to your PDA. If you work in a large office, it would be a good idea to make sure everyone knows how to use this program effectively. It can be very useful in avoiding telephone tag, scheduling meetings with large groups, and other tasks that often take more time to arrange than do, i.e. plan a meeting.

Bottom Line
This is a great program for those in offices, students, or anyone who needs office productivity. Most users only know a very small percentage of the program and don’t realize what it can do. I know that Bill Gates wants the world to become highly connected with its productivity tools. They are excellent, but in my observations as not only a college teacher, continuing education instructor, and trainer in a corporation, only about 20% of the staff in companies is using the programs with a modicum of effectiveness. The computers on most desktops are glorified typewriters generating emails and over-formatted memos and reports.

It is not cheap, it costs about $450 retail but can be purchased much cheaper through careful shopping. If one is a legitimate student, you can get the program from campustech.com for approximately $170. This is a full version including Access.

When purchasing the program, you also have to make sure that you are selecting the correct version. There are many versions out there. Make sure that you get the right program, if you get the wrong one, you won’t be able to return it after the shrink wrap is removed. The student or teacher edition does not have Access in it. Read the box carefully!