Microsoft Office Suite Office 4.0

1994, January 17

Microsoft Office 4.0 was a major release of the Microsoft Office suite, launched on January 17, 1994, for the Windows operating system.

Key Details of Office 4.0

Release Date: January 17, 1994.

Target OS: Primarily Windows 3.1x, Windows NT 3.1, and Windows NT 3.5.

Features: It introduced greater consistency across applications and new features like Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) 2.0 and IntelliSense for predictive automation.

Successor: It was quickly superseded by subsequent versions in the 4.x family, including Office 4.2 for Windows NT and the final 16-bit version, Office 4.3. The entire 4.x suite was eventually replaced by the fully 32-bit Office 95.

Applications Included

The initial Microsoft Office 4.0 suite included the following components:

Word 6.0

Excel 4.0 (purchasers received a coupon to upgrade to Excel 5.0, which was released shortly after)

PowerPoint 3.0 (purchasers received a coupon to upgrade to PowerPoint 4.0)

Microsoft Mail 3.1

Microsoft Office Manager (MOM), a toolbar program for launching Office applications

For historical and educational purposes, information on legacy Microsoft software can sometimes be found on online archives, such as the Internet Archive.