Welcome to the Microsoft Office Suite of Products

Microsoft has released many versions of Office over the past several years . Today, the majority of users use Office 2000. Those who have upgraded to later releases such as Office XP find that the upgrade process from Office 2000 is relatively simple because of the foundational power that Microsoft put in the Microsoft Office 2000 product.

Sams Teach Yourself Office Productivity All in One will focus on the Office 2000 version for its features, but if you use a later version, you'll be pleased to note that most of the features discussed throughout this book also work virtually identically in Office XP and versions that will be released later. One reason for this is because Microsoft put so much power in Office 2000 that the subsequent Office XP was more of a facelift than anything else. And the version released after Office XP is an even more minor upgrade from Office XP.

Throughout this text, when the latest version of Office has a new feature related to the current topic, you'll know about it through the use of sidebars and notes such as these. This approach keeps you on the cutting edge while still bringing in the large readership that needs Office 2000 training.

Office automates many of your computing chores and provides products that work in unison by sharing data among them. Office combines Microsoft's most powerful applications, such as Word and Excel, in a single package. The programs work well together and the final overall product, Microsoft Office, is called a suite of programs . You can still purchase the Office programs individually, building your own suite of products, but the Microsoft Office packages offer you the best deal.

Microsoft sells its Office suite in several versions. The three most common are

• Microsoft Office Academic Edition : Also called Microsoft Office Standard for Students and Teachers , this suite includes Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, which are considered the core Office products. Microsoft sells this edition of Office for a significant discount for qualified buyers. Buyers will be unable to take advantage of upgrade discounts when they are ready to upgrade to the next version, whereas owners of the other Office suites can take a substantial discount when upgrading to the next version.

• Microsoft Office Standard Edition : Contains the core products: Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. You can upgrade to a subsequent Office release at discounted prices.

• Office Professional Edition : In addition to Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, the Professional Edition contains Microsoft Access, a database product that enables you to manage large amounts of information.

If any or all of Microsoft Office's component programs, such as PowerPoint or Excel, are unfamiliar to you, the rest of this chapter describes each one so that you'll have the big picture. The rest of this book explores each of the Office products in more detail.

In addition to Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel, Sams Teach Yourself Office Productivity All in One teaches FrontPage, a Web page creation program that only comes with a special version of Office called the Developer Edition . FrontPage is also sold as a product you can purchase separately. Sams Teach Yourself Office Productivity All in One does not cover Access due to the more limited audience for Access compared to the other Office products.

You'll notice that office is used throughout this book to refer to general work and home office environments as well as Microsoft Office when Office is capitalized.