Productivity Improvements

Many of the big changes in Office 2003 have to do with communication and collaboration, but each of the core applications has seen improvements of its own as well. The biggest changes in Word involve the behind-the-schemes functionality of XML, the connectivity enhancements of the Research task pane, and the integration with Office on Microsoft.com. You'll see and use other new features, too, such as the new Reading Layout and the ability to mark documents as read-only, which lets you control access to and modification of important documents. Don't forget Tablet PC support (along with ClearType enhancements, which make text easier to read on LCD displays)-a big coup for brainstormers, doodlers, and those who spend much of their days away from their desks, sitting around conference tables.

Outlook extends online messaging capability to make it easy for you to see who's online and contact them instantly with a quick question or meeting request. Great improvements in both the look and feel and the function of Outlook make organizing and working with messages and appointments easier and more intuitive. A new Reading Pane gives you considerably more room onscreen to view selected messages, and smart folders and new views give you options for storing and working with information.

Tip 

Outlook's junk e-mail filtering has been greatly improved in Office 2003. A new filtering system evaluates the structure of individual messages to determine whether they should be classified as 'junk;' this is a major change from the sender-based blocking system used in Office XP. Additionally, lists for trusted senders and trusted receivers help users control their incoming and outgoing mail. For more about new junk e-mail filtering features in Outlook, see Chapter 2, 'Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Messaging.'

Excel's big news is support for XML and the increased functionality of smart tags. Excel also links up nicely to the improved list functionality in SharePoint Team Services, which enables you to publish specific ranges from a worksheet to a SharePoint list for review or discussion. Lists on a SharePoint Team Services site can be exported to Excel for easy reporting and list-maintenance tasks. The Tablet PC is now supported in Excel as well, so you can add notes to a document, edit a worksheet by hand, or circle key workbook elements that you feel need expansion.

PowerPoint has dropped the Pack and Go Wizard and replaced it with a Package to CD option, which enables you to create PowerPoint presentations that anyone can view, with or without PowerPoint. For the first time, smart tags also are available in PowerPoint, a major help for business presenters and developers who want to give viewers options for more information. Another big change is PowerPoint's integration with Microsoft Windows Media Player; now you can run video and include streaming audio in your presentations on the fly.

Access now supports XML and smart tags, enabling developers to create new, feature-rich help sets for end users and managers. Like Excel, Access now links to SharePoint Team Services, allowing you to share table data with others on your team or download information into an Access table for analyzing or reporting. Other functionality improvements include better error-checking for forms and reports, context-sensitive help when you're building SQL queries, and a new backup database option in the File menu that lets you create a backup while you work.

FrontPage takes a major step in this release toward working more comfortably with the variety of Web browsers, environments, and development languages that are currently in use on the Web. You can easily work in numerous browsers now and code in HTML if you choose without wading through the stock code earlier versions of FrontPage placed for you. It's cleaner, faster, and more flexible.

From the Experts

Jim Buyens, author of Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out, expects that the addition of dynamic templates, layout tables, and the new, elaborate editor in FrontPage 2003 will be a hit with developers. The lists, subwebs, and Web Parts in SharePoint Team Services also create interesting possibilities for development possibilities. When asked whether he would recommend that current FrontPage users upgrade to FrontPage 2003, he replied: 'Absolutely. It's worth the upgrade just for the coding features alone.'

Other productivity enhancements include changes in Microsoft Office Document Imaging, which includes smarter OCR (optical character recognition) software that enables you to convert scanned images into text, illustrations, and tables for export into Word. The improvements in Office Document Imaging can also help you with those non-Office documents you don't know what to do with; you can receive them as digital images and then convert them into the form you need that works with your other Office applications.

Finally, the new Microsoft Picture Library gives you an image toolkit for making simple edits to your digital images. You can compress, crop, edit, rotate, and change the brightness and contrast of pictures by using the editing features in the Picture Library. You can also use the Picture Library to rename the images you download from your digital camera, and you can share photos and diagrams with others using SharePoint Team Services.

More Info 

You'll learn more about the various improvements and additions in each of the core Office applications in Chapter 8, 'Microsoft Office 2003 Productivity Enhancements.'