Description:
Microsoft Office XP introduces a host of new features designed to complement all your favorite Office applications. The bulk of these changes are found in Word 2002, the latest version of Microsoft's ubiquitous word processing program. New features like task panes, smart tags, and integrated e-mail are designed to increase both personal and professional productivity, creativity, and efficiency. Task panes are dynamic windows that pop up in response to specific actions you're performing within a document, such as paragraph formatting or using mail merge options. Similarly, smart tags are icons that appear when you perform a particular task--simply hover your mouse over them and a drop-down menu of options will appear. Smart tags really come into play in Word 2002, greatly expanding your options. For example, you can now place your mouse over a contact name in a letter and the menu allows you to send that person an e-mail, open their entry in your contact book in Outlook, refer to outstanding schedule commitments, and so on. Other exciting innovations include the ability to select multiple, unconnected chunks of text (so you can cut and paste two unconnected paragraphs in one go), and the Reveal Formatting task pane, which lets you see all the formats and styles on a given selection. Use the Drawing Canvas to position pictures within a document, check out the Diagram Gallery to add business diagrams, or insert professional clip art from the Clip Organizer. While there is only so much you would want to change in a word processing package, which is designed for simply and quickly writing documents, Microsoft has managed to improve upon an already well-executed application. --John Rennie
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