Microsoft Office Professional 2003 [OLD VERSION]

The new Reading Layout view in Word 2003 makes it easier to read documents online.

View and organize information in Outlook 2003 for more ease of use. View larger.

View customized XML templates in Excel 2003. View larger.

The Research task pane helps you access online references without leaving PowerPoint 2003. View larger.

Reveal object dependencies and help check for errors in an Access 2003 task pane. View larger.

Seamlessly Connect People with Processes
Office 2003 is designed specifically to streamline communication and collaboration between internal and external team members using the desktop productivity programs that many people rely on every day. The "Document Workspaces" feature, for instance, enable teams to modify, access, and save documents in a central location. In addition, the "Shared Workspace" task pane displays tasks, related documents, links, and member lists that notify you when your team members are online.

When you share documents with Office 2003, you have control over what gets changed. You can choose permission settings and allow co-authors to alter only the sections or formatting that you choose. Office 2003 also helps protect your documents from being unintentionally changed by using formatting and editing restrictions. Simply set permission controls on entire documents or portions of a document to prevent modifications or reformatting. You can also improve the efficiency of your meetings with "Meeting Workspaces," which offer a centralized location for sharing agendas, visual resources, and other documentation. And instant messaging (IM), which can be displayed in most programs in Office 2003 applications, lets you know when your team members are online.

Broader .XML Support
One of the most significant upgrades that's included in Office 2003 is broader XML support. Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and Microsoft Office Access 2003 each offer XML schemas you can customize for using data, smart documents, and programmable task panes.

With these improvements, you can manipulate, analyze, and format data from your most critical business systems and can customize documents and task panes so that they integrate with XML data sources and outside programs. The enhancements also reduce development time with XML. With Excel 2003, for instance, you can use the visual mapping tool to connect a user-specified XML schema to fields in your spreadsheet, and customize smart tags to bring relevant business information directly into your work. (Access 2003, Outlook 2003, and PowerPoint 2003 each support third-party and customized smart tags.)

The Leading Suite of Applications
Included with Office 2003 Professional edition is Access 2003, Excel 2003, Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, PowerPoint 2003, Publisher 2003, and Word 2003.

Access 2003 provides a powerful set of tools that are sophisticated enough for professional developers, yet easy to learn for new users. With Access 2003, you can create or use powerful database solutions that make organizing, accessing, and sharing information easier than ever. Excel 2003 enables you to turn data into information with powerful tools to analyze, communicate, and share results. Excel 2003 can help you work better in teams, and help protect and control access to your work. In addition, you can work with XML data to make it easier to connect to business processes.

Outlook 2003 provides an integrated solution for managing and organizing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Outlook 2003 delivers innovations you can use to manage your communications, organize your work, and work better with others -- all from a single location. Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update is designed to help small businesses manage customer information and sales opportunities within Outlook 2003. The update includes new capabilities for sharing customer information within a PC network, as well as support for synchronizing business contacts with a Microsoft Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC.

PowerPoint 2003 includes new tools to help you create, present, and collaborate on presentations that have more impact. Keeping in touch and communicating with customers is essential for any business. A complete business publishing and marketing materials solution, Publisher 2003 can help you reach out to customers. With Publisher 2003, it's easier than ever to design, create, and publish professional marketing and communication materials in-house. And with Word 2003, the latest version of the best-selling word processor, you can create impressive-looking documents faster than ever before and help you collaborate more efficiently with others.

For example, the taskpane that now appears stage-left (screen- right) does more than display a stacked clipboard; if you've been repeating a series of formatting commands, those too appear in the stack for easy access. This is what computers have promised to deliver for some time now. In this and other ways, Microsoft is finally bringing it to users in a usable, intuitive manner.

Previous features such as spellchecking, grammar, integration and smart cut-copy-paste operations are all present. Perhaps the best addition to the suite is Microsoft's OneNote, which promises to capture freeform notes and text in whatever way you like, digitizing tablet handwriting or keyboard entry; the killer app is how it recognizes the handwriting and indexes the text for finding your notes again. Call it system-wide Graffiti for Windows.

Still, this is Office and the usual bloat in disk space, system requirements, and price tag all apply. This is a release most-targeted for businesses that can afford to roll this out to many users under a favorable license. If a company such as GE had to pay $450 a seat, you can bet GE would be using a competitor's product tomorrow. So for an individual, Office is still a four-star player.

For anyone considering Office 2003, let me weigh in with a wet blanket on previous rave reviews: if you have Office 2000/2002/XP, you don't need this release. Honestly. This iteration does not contain a truly compelling feature set that will bring you to spend a few hundred dollars. Microsoft's OneNote is good, maybe even killer, but you've gotten along without it for quite some time now, haven't you?

To put all this in a single paragraph: if you're on Office 97 or earlier, and can score the upgrade, and have the bucks, this is a good release to use. However, if you don't have the bucks, Office 2002 or even Office 2000 are still viable alternatives that provide 95% of the features at 30-70% of the cost.


Best of Class   September 18, 2003
Robert D. Shull (Fairfield, OH)
63 out of 77 found this review helpful

I am using Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Enterprise edition, obtained through an MSDN subscription.

Microsoft Office System 2003 will prove to be the best in its class. The Microsoft Office Family has been revamped to provide industry standard XML and .NET support. Files can be easily shared between applications in the Office System family.

Microsoft Office now includes a new research tool that allows you to easily search for information. You can search research books (thesaurus, dictionaries) and web resources. Third party developers are creating even more sources (like Google) that will make this an essential tool for anyone writing reports.

Microsoft Outlook has been revamped with a new and improved interface. It is now easy to categorize messages, calendar items, contacts and more. These items can then be sorted by category! Outlook 2003 is easier to use than any previous version.

Microsoft Office 2003 is a complete solution for the home and business user alike. It is an essential tool for students and developers. The wave of the future is XML and Microsoft is beginning to shape that future today.

If you are new to Microsoft Office this is an essential product. This is a nice upgrade from Office 2000 or XP, but mostly for developers and businesses. If you want to harness the power of XML or .NET this is for you.

Microsoft Office System 2003 will only run on systems with Windows 2000 or XP installed.


Buyer beware   November 26, 2003
59 out of 83 found this review helpful

One of the worst products that came out of Microsoft, it is not backward compatible, it can't recognize any controls from excel 2000, as soon as I started an excel 2000 file in it (after lowering the macro security) it started giving me error, cannot reference the object etc. and was unwilling to stop the debugging. I have to end the task. This happened with practically all my excel 2000 spreadsheets, in some it doesn't recognize the ActiveX controls from previous version, in some cases references. I checked the reference under tools and excel 2000 reference objects were not there. At last I had to uninstall office 2003 and install office 2000 in my new PC. It is frustrating to see how Microsoft is using their monopoly in office application to squeeze as much as they can. It essentially means that one has to go on paying MS $400+ every year for new versions and over that have to redo their whole applications (excel, access etc.) in order for it to work. It definately doesn't increase productivity.
I must agree I should have listened to the other comments and should have thought of converting to OpenOffice but now it is too late for me but not for you I hope. I have finally started to migrate to Openoffice though slowly, I will also recommend to others to do the same if they want to stop paying Microsoft money everyyear for softwares that doesn't work.


Too expensive   December 1, 2003
54 out of 80 found this review helpful

If you have to use MS Windows, you have a binary choice when it comes to office suites:

1. Open/StarOffice
2. MS Office

The first one is great, but is way too slow and its *.doc and *.xls converter is not perfect.

The second is really fast -- Word 2003 on P4 1.5G 1G RAM loads in two seconds. But... the professional edition, which is what you want/need/desire costs way too much. I was able to buy it only because I am a student so I get 50% discount on software.

In other words, why would anyone pay $500 for an office suite? And if you have four computers at your home (like me), then you can't even install it on all of them (actually, you can install office on your desktop and laptop for non concurent use only). Thanks God I use Linux at home, so I have no other alternative than to use free software ;-)

But... if you do use MS Windows at home and you have money to pay for it and it does not really bother you, then you are getting a really good piece of software. I have been using it for a while and it runs smoothly even on XP inside a VM.

However, I would like to see MS adding OneNote and FrontPage to the professional edition, so you feel that spending $500 was worth it.

I give it only three stars not because of the software quality, which is really good, but because of the price, which for people like me is just to high, and licensing.


Great Product but...   January 29, 2006
Jvalant N. Sampat (Princeton, NJ)
37 out of 42 found this review helpful

Microsoft makes the best office suite - period. However, I still do believe that the price is a bit of a rip-off. I have been using Open Office (...) which is developed by Sun Microsystems and is FREE. It is also compatible with MS Office - you can save the files in Word, PowerPoint etc. format. The more I use it, the more I wish I had it during my undergrad days. If money is not your concern - MS Office is definitely the best productivity suite out there. However, if you are a student and wish to make presentations or documents for school/university work I would definitely recommend Open Office as you simply cannot get anything better for free and it shall suit all your needs. I mean at the end of the day - you are graded on your work now how the slides come flying in. But Open has the flying slides too - thought the MS ones still look cooler:) I particularly liked exporting Word Files to PDF format within Open Office. For the record I am not anti-Microsoft - they have some good products - I just wish they would make them more affordable. I hope this helps.