If you are considering the move to Microsoft’s Office 97 suite of products, there are some features that you should be aware of.
Some Good News:
Office 97 makes Web publishing easier. All Office applications can generate HTML files, and allow you to directly “save” to your Web site via FTP. Microsoft Word 97 can also read HTML files and serve as an HTML editor.
Word 97 can disable autoexecute macros, which is an effective safeguard against Word macro viruses like “Concept”, one of the most prevalent viruses on campus.
Some Cautions:
The Office 97 products save in a different format than their 95 counterparts. To go back to an older version of the software, you must do a “Save As” and select the right format. There is NO GOING BACK with Microsoft Access. Once you convert a database to Access 97 you cannot return to Access 95 at all.
There is a filter to allow Word 97 documents to be read by PC users with Word 95 or 6.0. There is a similar filter for Macintosh Word users with versions 5.1 or 6.0. Both of these filters are available on Microsoft’s web site, and also on the UCI Mac and PC archives:
http://mac-archive.oac.uci.edu/ -or- http://pc-archive.oac.uci.edu/
There have been many bugs in Office 97; Microsoft has released over 8 Mb of patches in a file called “Service Release 1” (SR-1). We recommend that all Office 97 users download and install these patches. For more information, contact your local computing supporter, see the UCI PC archive, or Microsoft’s Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Office97/ServiceRelease/
More information about Microsoft Office can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/ –and– http://www.microsoft.com/OfficeFreeStuff/