Office Professional 2003 (Excel, Outlook, Word, Powerpoint, Publisher, Access)

Product Description
Microsoft Office 2003 Software Professional Edition Ref MS O2003PRO

Microsoft's Office Professional 2003 is a bundle of essential desktop applications: Office Word2003 for word processing, Office Excel 2003 for spreadsheets, Office PowerPoint 2003 for presentations, and Office Outlook 2003 for e-mail and personal information. This Professional edition also includes the Office Access 2003 database manager along with Office Publisher 2003, an easy-to-use desktop publishing application. Office applications share a common look and feel, and also benefits from shared components, such as the drawing tools which let you create charts, diagrams and text effects. Another strong point is the integrated Visual Basic for Applications, enabling anything from simple macros to complete custom solutions.

Office has been a highly capable product for years, making it hard for Microsoft to come up with compelling new features. One of the most interesting is Information Rights Management, which lets you restrict document access to specific individuals. This requires a Rights Management Server and is not for casual use, but will be attractive to those with sensitive data. Office Professional 2003 is also underpinned by strong XML support, a powerful feature though mainly of interest to developers. Another aspect is great integration with SharePoint Services running on Windows Server 2003, allowing users to save documents to an internal web site with features like update notification, task lists, and version control. Tablet PC users get built-in support for Ink, letting you add handwritten notes and drawings to Office documents. Those with always-on Internet access will like the updated Task Pane, offering online help and potentially third-party services direct from the Internet. Outlook has been reworked in this edition, with a better interface and more secure email reading. Office Word 2003 is enhanced with a new Reading view, using ClearType technology and automatic page sizing for ease in reading online documents.

Office deserves its position as the leading productivity suite. It's an excellent deal, but makes less sense as an upgrade unless you have a Tablet PC or will make use of the new collaboration, XML or rights-management features. --Tim Anderson

Satisfied
I was completely satisfied with the product. This was a replacement for Office 2003. I was considering the next one up (2007) but when I gave it the 60 day trial is was far to complex for my needs. So, with the skill of long use I returned to the system I know and am now completely happy with Office Professional 2003.

Buy Microsoft Office Professional 2003 and never look back
Maybe the latest version of Corel Word Perfect office suite is better, but if you buy Office Profession 2003 suite you will not regret it.

You need to have a relatively need computer running Windows XP or Vista or Windows 7 and plenty of memory. I suggest you have 2GB of ram and a fast micro processor. Anything from 1.7 GHZ upwards will do.

Forget about Office 2007 with it ribbon interface. Office 2007 may look nicer, but Office 2003 is much easier to use because it uses the traditional pull-down menus

Unfortunately Front Page 2003 is not included in the Professional suite edition.

The major programs you get are WORD, ACCESS, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, PUBLISHER and OUTLOOK.

Normally I only need WORD and EXCEL. Both are very full-featured programmes. They are very easy to use.

There was a time in the early 1990s when Microsoft included big printed manuals with their office suites, but not any more. All the help is built in to the software and can be accessed by clicking the help menu.

But some people, like me, prefer to read manuals too. I still have some old original Microsoft manuals that came with Excel 5 for Windows 3.1

Back in the early 1990s Borland included two manuals with their Quattro Pro 5 for DOS spreadsheet: The User's guide with had 653 pages, and the @Functions and Macros manual which had 234 pages - and that was just for the spreadsheet program!

The reason Microsoft stopped bundling the manuals with their office software is because they wanted to make more money selling the manuals separately, and also because they wanted to sell the software cheaper and have a market edge. There are many other authors writing books for all the major applications that Microsoft produces and the latest versions too. So you have a lot to choose from.

I still like DOS application manuals for Spreadsheets, even if they are for a different spreadsheet because they are still informative.

I am not crazy about Microsoft's new ribbon Graphical User Interface. I know that Excel 2007 looks prettier than Excel 2003, but the ribbon interface at the top of the programs takes up more of the viewing area, and it is awkward to use. I know where everything is on the traditional pull-down menus, and I prefer the extra viewing space that I get with Excel 2003 when I'm looking at the data in a spreadsheet.

Excel 2003 is a very powerful spreadsheet and it is easy to use. I'm happy with it. I'm not upgrading to Excel 2007

If you buy the Office 2003 professional suite I would suggest that you also buy FRONTPAGE 2003 as well if you are interested in creating your own website. FRONTPAGE 2003 will be sufficient for creating simple, straight-forward websites. If you want an E-commerce website, complete with shopping-cart system then I think you might have to consider Dream Weaver or something else.

Office 2003 runs very well on modern laptop computers. The programs look good and they are very powerful.

There are two ways of activating the Office Suite: over the internet or manually.
If you are doing it manually then there is a product code on the inside cover of the CD case. You enter the code into any of the programs when the suite is installed. Then you ring the Microsoft number and tell them the code that appears on your screen. They will then give you an activation code, which you must enter in order to use the program permanently after the trial period has expired.

Office 2000 was a great suite too. It had the advantage of being able to install and activate without having to contact Microsoft at all. You just enter your product code that comes with the software into the program and it is automatically activated. Theoretically, if you had 1,000 laptop computers you could install the one copy of Office 2000 on each of them. And have it permanently activated. That might be considered piracy by Microsoft that is why with office 2003 and later versions you have to get an activation code either by telephone or over the internet in order to use the programs. Its an anti-piracy measure to prevent you from installing your one copy of Office 2003 on 1,000 laptop computers.

How many times can you activate office 2003? If you do it by phone maybe two or three times.

Office 2003 unhappy result
I am very unhappy with this transaction. I give it no stars at all. First of all the delivery arrived over three weeks late. I have great difficulty contacting the seller, my latest e-mail has not yet been answered after 5 days.

When the software arrived I suspected that the copy was not a legitimate copy and have asked for confirmation that it is legitimate. After nearly a week I have not had that confirmation

At present I have a claim with Amazon for refund of my payment for this purchase.

Office Professional 2003
I found Microsoft Office 2003 an excellent piece of softwear and would recommend it to anyone. There is also a good back up from Microsoft to help you with each individual module. The three main modules I use are Word,Excel and Access I found the templates in Word very easy to use and useful, along with the making of data bases in Access and spread sheets in Excel. I have yet to use Desk Top Publishing. This programme is also compatible with Office 2000 and 2003. I was advised against bying Microsoft 2007 and I am pleased I took this advice.

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