Microsoft Word 2003 Upgrade [OLD VERSION]

Other products by Microsoft

Product Features

• Office management and document creation tool for better communication
• Grant users permission to modify parts of or entire document
• Control the distribution of sensitive documents; access IM directly from Word
• Quickly find information while still in Word with research task pane
• Supports XML so users can implement custom schemas

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000BZ54W
• Item model number: 059-04276
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 29, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,163 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #8 in	Software > Business & Office > Word Processing
  #29 in	Software > Business & Office > Office Suites > Office Suites for Windows

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Microsoft Office Word 2003 Upgrade, 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 Word 2003 Win32 English Version Upgrade CD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 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 (Houston, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Part of MS Office, February 18, 2007

By	Thomas Cox Jr. "Thomas R. Cox Jr." (Kingston, TN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like Word very much, and I am glad MS separated it from Office as I did not need all the parts. Over time, I have learned to do all anyone could require of such a program, and the help on the internet is superb.

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Office Ever--But Could Be Better, March 18, 2006

By	Michael Drotar - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm studying to become a game programmer. I bought this product to upgrade from an older version, primarily, for the ability to make your own formating styles (in addition to having normal font, the headers, and a couple others.. you can make your own custom ones) so that managing my game documentation would be easier. That way, if I wanted to change the apearance of soemthing in the document (such as the font color of a hero's ability), I would need only to change the format that each entry was using rather than change each entry individually.

While developing some documentation, I found that being able to set my own bookmarks was also a great feature. That way, I could make charts and tables that cross-referenced each other... while reading about an ability that makes an item, the user could click the name of the item to be taken to a description of it. From there, either alt+left arrow would take him back to continue reading about the ability. Unfortunately, the interface for all this is rather tedious--especially when you have a couple hundred references in a document.

Ultimately, I decided that building a database and displaying the data through HTML would be easier--it still provides the ability to update a style and have the document automatically update each part of the document using that style, but also gives me the ability to automatically generate links for cross-referencing.

Still, for a WYSIWYG editor, Office is pretty darned good. And since it's a WYSIWYG editor, it's still great for prototyping.