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Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition

Apollo Score: Apollo Score: 86 Users' Rating: 1 (10 votes)

Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition Although it’s far from perfect, an honest reviewer must say up front that the Office suite has come a long way over the years. While there’s still some distance to be travelled before they form a completely seamless suite, the individual components are looking pretty sharp.

There’s Word, the standard in word processing that’s changed only modestly from the 95 version.

There’s Excel, the spreadsheet program that even the greenest of users can use to produce good-looking spreadsheets.

There’s PowerPoint, the presentation program that produces sharp presentations in a snap.

There’s Access, a database application that deserves wider use by regular folks.

There’s also Outlook, a combination calendar, e-mail, address book program that could be laid out better, but still has a handy combination of functions.

And there’s Bookshelf Basics, a miniature version of Microsoft’s reference package, including a dictionary, thesaurus and book of quotations.

On top of all that, you get 3,000 clip-art images, 150 fonts and Internet Explorer (hands up, anyone who hasn’t received three or four copies bundled with just about everything).

Microsoft Office 97 Professional Edition is an impressive package. Those who don’t have use for a database might want to get a lesser version of the Office suite, but think first about your CD or book collection or other hobby that involves lots of stuff that needs to be tracked. Access is a much better choice than a spreadsheet for that kind of use.

This package is more powerful than most home users will ever know. But that’s OK - better too much potential that not enough.

It’s probably true that, Office 97’s improvements over Office 95 are modest enough to make this the upgrade to skip and wait for the next one. But if you’re starting from scratch, this is a package worth looking at. Even if you do hate Microsoft.

Brian Webster

Released in 1996
Published by Microsoft
Web site: www.microsoft.com/office
Computer platform: Win 95/Win NT