Microsoft Office Suite Office 97 (8.0)

1996, November 19

Microsoft Office 97 (version 8.0) is the fifth major release for Windows of Microsoft Office, released by Microsoft on November 19, 1996. A Mac OS equivalent, Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition, was released on January 6, 1998. Microsoft Office 97 became a major milestone release for introducing new features and improvements over its predecessor Microsoft Office 95.

The suite is officially compatible with Windows NT 3.51 SP5 through Windows Me. It is the last version of Microsoft Office to support Windows NT 3.51 SP5 and Windows NT 4.0 RTM–SP2. Two Service Releases (SR-1 and SR-2) have been released for Office 97; SR-2 solves the year 2000 problem in Office 97. Hotfix support for Office 97 ended on February 28, 2002, while assisted support options and security updates ended on January 16, 2004.

Features

Office 97 introduced "Command Bars", a paradigm in which menus and toolbars are made more similar in capability and visual design. It also featured natural language systems and sophisticated grammar checking.

Office 97 introduced the Office Assistant, an interactive animated character designed to assist users via Office help content. The default assistant is "Clippit", nicknamed "Clippy", a paperclip.

Office 97 is the first Microsoft product to include product activation, albeit limited to the Brazilian editions of Office 97 Small Business Edition and Publisher.

An option to upgrade to Internet Explorer 3.02 came with the Office Professional version, though the icon would not appear if the browser was already installed.

Two Office 97 applications feature easter eggs: a hidden pinball game in Microsoft Word and a hidden flight simulator in Microsoft Excel.

Office 97 supported UTF-16.

Editions

Office 97 has been released in five editions: Standard Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition, Small Business Edition 2.0, and Developer Edition. Each has its own selection of included applications.