Downloading the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC

First, let me explain how this works. The folks at Microsoft released Office XP about a year and a half before Tablet PC came out, and the next version of Microsoft Office wasn’t slated to come out until a while after Tablet PC was released. So the folks at Microsoft were sort of caught in this in-between time when they couldn’t give the public a full-blown Office XP for Tablet PC.

Tip If you’re reading this book after the post-XP version of Office is finally released, just skip this section!

What did those clever folks in Redmond, WA, do? They came up with an interim plan. They released an update for Office XP that would overlay some ink and speech functionality on the current product and made that update publicly available for download.

Tip As official members of the Office family, Visio and Project also gain limited Tablet PC functionality when you install the Office XP Pack.

With Office XP installed on your Tablet PC, you can go to

 http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2002/oxptp.aspx

to download the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC, which automatically installs the update (as shown in Figure 10-1). Most Tablet PC manufacturers also offer a link to this download page from their Web sites.

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Figure 10-1: Download the Office XP Pack from Microsoft, and it installs automatically.

Tip After you’ve downloaded and installed the Office XP Pack, an Office XP Pack for Tablet PC Help item will be added to each Office application’s Help menu.