Every 18 months or so Microsoft brings a fresh new version of Office to the masses with promises of improved reliability, performance, and usability. Office 2003 stands up to those standards, but truthfully, very little changed at the core of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access applications

Base applications main changes

Word

* You can view and work on two documents in the same side-by-side screen.
* You can copy protect portions of text or whole paragraphs.
* Better use of the task pane for research and searching.


* Users can select a range of data within a sheet to work on separately.
* Copy-protect individual cells.
* Better use of the task pane for research and look-ups.

PowerPoint

* CD packager utility allows you to burn a presentation and include a viewer for easy distribution.
* PowerPoint will now play embedded movies full screen.

While most of these changes are basic improvements in usability of everyday applications, the real work seems to have gone into better integration of XML and Microsoft Server components like SharePoint Services and intelligent document management.

View the Rest of the TECHTV Article