Introducing Microsoft Office

Welcome to Microsoft Office 2000 for Windows, Microsoft's best-selling application suite containing the latest versions of Microsoft's most popular business software products. If you're like most users, you have probably had some experience using one or more of the applications in Office. For this release, each program has been enhanced with new features and fine-tuned to publish information on the Web. If you have the Small Business edition of Office 2000 (the software described in this book), you have the following application programs:

• Microsoft Word 2000
• Microsoft Excel 2000
• Microsoft Outlook 2000
• Microsoft Publisher 2000
• Microsoft business tools, including Small Business Bookshelf, Small Business Financial Manager, Direct Mail Manager, and Customer Management Application

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If you have the Professional edition of Office, you'll also have PowerPoint, and a database management program named Microsoft Access. If you have the Premium edition of Office, you'll also have PowerPoint, Access, FrontPage, and PhotoDraw.

What are the benefits of Microsoft Office 2000, in a nutshell? By combining Microsoft's flagship programs into one unified application suite, Microsoft has created a general-purpose tool that can handle virtually all the data processing, forecasting, communication, and Web publishing activities of a modern business or organization. Each Office application shares common commands, dialog boxes, and procedures, so once you learn how to use one application, you'll be able to apply what you've learned to all the rest.

In addition, the Office applications have been designed to work together, enabling you to combine text from Word, a chart from Excel, and financial information from Small Business Manager into one compelling presentation. Office applications also support a variety of file formats (including HTML), present similar formatting tools and macro languages, and provide full support for electronic mail and workgroup activities, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time you start a new project. In short, Microsoft Office 2000 is designed to adapt itself to the way you work.