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MS Office – Microsoft's Ever-evolving Suite Of Wonders
These days most of us seem not to imagine using a laptop and sometimes even a smartphone or tablet without Word and Excel – two most popular representatives of MS Office. Whether you are a businessperson, a houseperson or a student, Microsoft Office is an integral and vital part of what you refer to as your computer. And although the Office appears to you as something natural that has been around forever, believe it or not, it also has had to evolve and develop since its debut in the late 1980s. As its future is Microsoft's closely guarded secret, we will look back at then and now – exploring MS Office's history and reminding what it offers to make your life easier.
The Beginning Of A Phenomenon
The year was 1988. Michael Jackson was conquering the world with his Bad tour, the Iron Curtain was gradually crumbling, Calgary (Canada) and Seoul (South Korea) held the winter and summer Olympic Games respectively and the first Internet link between Europe and the United States was established – sparking the discussion on the concept of the World Wide Web. On August 1, at the COMDEX trade fair in Las Vegas, Bill Gates officially announced the release of The Microsoft Office, as it was called back then. The name was a slick marketing term used for an office suite of three productivity Microsoft applications that had already been released separately. The iconic trinity included: Word (1983) for creating and editing text documents, Excel (1985) – a spreadsheet for data analysis and PowerPoint (1987) for presentations. The bundle became available for customers in 1990 competing with similar but separate products on the market like WordPerfect (for text) or Lotus 1-2-3 (for spreadsheets). Soon Microsoft came up with an idea that tilted public's favour towards their suite.
Integration And Growth
The ace up Microsoft's sleeve was integration of the apps, which was introduced later on. An example of the shared features introduced for more MS Office products can be now the well-known spell checker. Let's not forget, however, also about object linking and embedding. Another crucial factor for Microsoft's success was one common platform for all Office applications – namely Windows. The very suite had also grown in the number of its apps. New additions included: Mail (1992) renamed later to Outlook, Access (1992) and Publisher (1999), among others. Each new version of MS Office would bring improvements and surprises. Remember Clippy – the virtual assistant from Windows 97? Oh, the good old 90s when it took over 40 floppy disks to install the new version of Office on your PC.
Welcome To The New Millennium
MS Office would change and improve with every new suite, bringing to life new applications like Planner, Whiteboard or OneNote. It seems, however, that the biggest revolution came along with cloud computing. In 2010 Microsoft introduced Office 365, which was basically a cloud-based subscription service, providing access to the Office suite for companies. In a way it freed the software from the machine, making MS Office assigned to a given employee (instead of a computer) and available on any device, along with other services like email and storage. Moreover, valid subscription equals in this case a constant access to all the updates, without the need to officially release the new version of the Office. No wonder that soon Microsoft made this option also available for individual customers, who embraced it in no time and in 2017 Office 365 became more popular than the traditional license.
The Present
36 years after its announcement Office is a dominant productivity software on the global market for business and home usage. It offers applications galore, and their range depends on the specific subscription plan you choose. But the most popular still include Word, Excel and PowerPoint, alongside Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, and SharePoint. The most widely used variant of the Office is the desktop version available for both Windows and Mac operating systems. Microsoft also offers mobile apps for Android and iOS, while Office on the web is the software that runs within a web browser. In spite of competition from free and open-source alternatives, it does not lose its leadership quality and focuses on further evolution towards the ever-growing users' needs. In 2022 the name was changed from Office 365 to Microsoft 365 to highlight the inclusion of features and services beyond the core Microsoft Office suite. However, it is quite likely that the legendary name will return in 2024.
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