Microsoft Word 2003 [OLD VERSION]

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Communicate quickly and effectively with others--internally and across organizations
• Bring information into your documents for more timely access to the information you need
• Quickly find the information you need to complete your work
• Create impressive-looking documents that help you work better together
• Read documents more easily online with the new Reading Layout view

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.8 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B0000BZ54V
• Item model number: 059-04263
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 12, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,499 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #36 in Software > Business & Office > Word Processing

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Microsoft Office Word 2003, the latest version of the best-selling word processor, takes customer experience and feedback to deliver innovations you can use to create impressive-looking documents and help you work better together.

Communicate quickly and effectively with others—internally and across organizations.

• Work together better. Save Word 2003 documents to shared workspaces where other team members can get the latest version, check the documents in or out, or even save task lists, related documents, links, and member lists. Shared workspaces require Microsoft Windows Server 2003 running Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
• Control distribution of sensitive documents. Help protect your company assets by preventing recipients from forwarding, copying, or printing important documents by using information rights management (IRM) functionality. You can even specify an expiration date for the message, after which it cannot be viewed or changed. IRM functionality requires Windows Server 2003 running Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS).
• Collaborate with confidence. Designate certain sections of your document to be modified by specific people to better protect how your document is modified and reduce the number of conflicting comments you receive. You can even prevent reviewers from making changes unless they turn revision marks on, or you can make the entire document read-only with key portions that can be modified only by specific individuals. You can also help protect the formatting and style of your document.
• See comments and revisions more easily. Markup features in Word 2003 have been enhanced to make comments more visible and offer better ways to help you track and merge changes and read comments.
• Communicate instantly with others. No need to leave Word to find out if an instant messaging (IM) contact is online--you can access IM and even initiate IM conversations in Word 2003.
• Go mobile. If you own and use a Tablet PC, you can annotate Word documents using a pen input device--in your own handwriting. You can annotate documents for personal use, such as taking notes, or to send to others.

Bring information into your documents for more timely access to the information you need to make good decisions.

• Create organizational solutions with XML. Word 2003 supports both the Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format and custom schemas, providing the basis for building solutions to business problems such as data reporting, publishing, and submitting data to business processes.
• Interact with business systems. Save and open XML files in Word 2003 to integrate with key business data in your organization. Developers can build solutions that use XML to interact with business systems through a task pane in Word.
• Customize functionality with enhanced smart tags. Smart tags in Word 2003 are more flexible. Associate smart tags with specific content and have the appropriate smart tag appear when you point to the associated words.

Quickly find the information you need to complete your work.

• Find facts quickly. Stay in Word to do your research. The Research task pane can bring electronic dictionaries, thesauruses, and online research sites into Word so that you can quickly find information and incorporate it into your documents. Some functionality in the Research task pane requires a connection to the Internet.
• Get a head start on your work. Take advantage of resources on Microsoft Office Online--including professionally designed templates, add-ins, and online training--that you can access in Word. Using Office Online requires a connection to the Internet. Learn more about Office Online.

Find the help you need. From the Getting Started and Help task panes, you can access Assistance on Office Online. It provides help and assistance articles that are updated regularly from requests and issues of other users. Some functionality in these task panes requires a connection to the Internet. Learn more about Office Online.

Read with greater comfort. The new Reading Layout view makes it easier to read documents. It optimizes the document for reading on the screen, including larger text, shorter lines, and pages that exactly fit your screen. Microsoft ClearType produces letter shapes that are easier to read. You can also access specific pages quickly through the thumbnail view.

Product Description

Microsoft Office Word 2003 is the office management and document creation tool that helps workers communicate and share infomration, more easily and securely than ever! Access electronic dictionaries, thesauruses, and online research sites through the Research task pane

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just keeps getting better!, September 18, 2003

By 

Pauly C. (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Word 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I was lucky enough to get Office 2003 before the official release date. Microsoft has done a nice job on the interface. Everything looks cleaner, and it will pop up useful sidebars on the righthand side (such as the clipbook for pasting items you have copied, help items, etc).

Another thing about the interface is that it meshes nicely with Windows XP themes. It will take a soft blue color when paired with Windows XP's default theme. All of the bars will be blue. This is nice on the eyes. The same goes with silver - everthing will match.

As for upgrading to 2003 from older versions... this is a tough call. If you have Word XP, I would be hard pressed to tell you to upgrade. Even Word 2000 does a fine job. I don't know if there are enough new bells and whistles in this to warrant upgrading. If you like to have the newest of everything however, this is the best word processor out there for PCs.

For those of you on a tight budget, thers is hope. As good as Microsoft Office products are, there is a FREE alternative. You may want to give OpenOffice 1.1 a download. It is completely free and open source, and most importantly, compatible with Microsoft documents (word, excel, etc).

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The famously broken bits are still broken., June 17, 2004

By 

Kimba W. Lion "kimbawlion.com" (the East Coast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Microsoft Word 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Pointing out Word's faults is like pointing out the pyramids are crumbling--it may be true, but they're still going to be there. Still, Word's Master Document "feature" is still the surest way to document corruption. And you'd better track down the internet page that gives detailed instructions on the convoluted way you need to set up heading numbering if you want to keep your Word documents from corrupting.

And so on. I doubt anyone cares. Word is a fact of life, no matter if it's constantly falling to bits. The new version's XML support does give you a new path to recovering a corrupted document: saving to XML and then converting that file back to Word format has saved me some time on a couple of occasions.

We use Word because we have to. On those occasions when I don't have to, I use WordPerfect, because I like to actually produce things, not spend my time dealing with software problems.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Justified Upgrade for some, but not all, November 8, 2003

By 

J. Turner (Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Word 2003 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Word 2003 is more powerful than ever. Unfortunately, most of the new features are aimed primarily towards large business. As a result, many end-users simply won't need them (or be able to use them). The users who will benefit most from upgrading are corporate users or users purchasing bundles with new PCs.

Pros:

Instant Messaging support is now integrated with Office applications. However, only MSN messenger is used. Users who predominantly use Yahoo, trillian, jabber, or ICQ will not find any utility in this feature, without signing up for a messenger account.

The user interface has changed for the better, and matches the Windows XP interface better. Personally, I like it. Also, fonts are rendered better, and consequently documents will look better on laptops (no more jagged edges).

The Reading Layout feature splits the text into a two column format for easier reading (think newspaper).

If you have Microsoft Server and SharePoint services installed on your network, you can share and track changes to word documents. Nice feature, but requires a significant investment on server software.

When typing an hypertext link, word no longer reformats the font of the URL.

Cons:

Product activation, which requires network access.

All of the Office applications now have a blended help system that first checks help files online first, before getting local help files.

XML is useless for end users. Programmers who use Word to write XML will find that Word no longer tries to autocorrect much of the XML, but you will still have the annoying red underline on many of your XML tags because the spellchecker flags them as misspelled.

Still, I think it makes a worthy upgrade for 97/2000 users, but XP users will find the expense difficult to justify. More specifically, if you are an end user without a lot of Microsoft back end software installed on your network (Windows 2000/2003 Server, SharePoint services, etc.) I would think very carefully before upgrading.