Microsoft Office XP Professional Upgrade [Old Version]

In keeping with Microsoft's much-ballyhooed .NET strategy, Office XP introduces several features that utilize the vast infosphere inhabited by the 21st-century desk jockey. Smart tags beckon underneath recognized objects like misspellings or symbols, offering a stock quote here, a synonym there, or "Would anyone care to configure my auto-correction list?" The task pane looks similar to Microsoft Internet Explorer's Explorer Bar, and acts like an open tool chest pulled up alongside each application in the suite, providing readily configured searches for information or multimedia files. Putting up a team Web site that tracks projects and serves as an information hub requires only the use of one of the included templates, ready to be customized and uploaded to the server.

The Send for Review feature further streamlines the collaborative process by allowing the sender to view revisions made by multiple parties within the framework of the original document. Outlook now features a color-coded calendar and easier meeting management, along with instant messaging and variable e-mail account access. All user system errors can be tracked globally, and then network security settings modified remotely while anti-virus and debugging IT resources are diverted accordingly.

After firing up Microsoft Word, typing "Dear Somebody," and hitting the Enter key, we made a startling discovery. Up popped Clippy, Microsoft's publicly pink-slipped office assistant. Clippy might have aptly announced, "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," but instead predictably observed, "It looks like you're writing a letter." Once the groans of disbelief had subsided, we quickly right-clicked and banished Clippy to the silicon ether, presumably forever. --Dominic Johnson--This review refers to Office XP Standard Edition

Amazon.com Product Description
Microsoft Office XP Professional puts the features you need within easyreach at all times. New and improved tools in Access allow you to build andmanage lists and databases, or analyze information from databases such asMicrosoft SQL Server. New context-sensitive smart tags pop up with optionsyou need--right when you need them. No digging through menus. Tasks thatonce required multiple steps are just one click away with the new taskpane.

The new version of Outlook in Office XP Professional condenses all yourpersonal and professional e-mail into one central location, even your Web-based e-mail accounts like Hotmail. With AutoRecover, your work is saved at regular intervals while you work. PowerPoint includes animation effects and custom slidetransitions. An editable print preview assures that your printed slides and documents come out right the first time. Office XP Professional also includes Word 2002 and Excel 2002.

First of all if you thought Word was slow, wait until you try Word XP. It takes nearly 5 minutes for a large document to load in Word XP while Word brought it up in a few seconds. And when word finally does load your document, it has stupid comments all over your document (which is probally why it took so long to load). The first time I tried printing a document with Word XP, it took nearly 90 minutes for it to even get to the printer! When the document FINALLY printed out, I found that it printed out ALL the comments which DOUBLED the size of my document. I figured out how to turn the comments off, but have not figured out how to turn it off permantly. So everytime I load a document, I have to turn the comments off and hope that the drop downs that do this actually work!

Also when I first loaded word, outlook or excel there was this annoying "pop up" at the top corner of your screen that had something to do with hands free typing. I permantly killed this window too because I DON'T NEED THIS [stuff] MICROSOFT!!

Also another feature I don't like is when you copy more that one item in word, it brings up another annoying clipboard window that Microsoft assumes you want. This window displays EVERYTHING you have copied and covers up part of the window you are working in. I never have and never will use this clipboard so there is no reason why it should keep popping up. Apparantly Microsft "forgot" to add a way to permantely turn this off from office. I ended up having to go into the Windows registry to do it.

Finally there are bugs galore. The buttons and drop downs sometimes stop working for no apparant reason. Sometimes when trying to open certain documents from other office programs you get error messages, and when trying to open Help, you occasionally get messages saying "Error opening help"! Go figure.

Top these errors off with the ever annoying autoformatting "feature" in Word, Excel and Office and you have a complete waste of money.

Bottom line, Don't waste your money on this. You are MUCH better off with what you have now. I have discovered, that Microsoft tries to FORCE you to do things the way they ASSUME you like to do things. They just keep adding more "features" that intefere more than assist you. You will spend a lot of time undoing what they force you to do. You will also spend a lot of time trying to turn off their useless and annoying "features" just to type ONE document. Heck you may be better off with a typewritter since you have the freedom to do what YOU want instead of wasting time undoing what Microsoft automatically does for you.


A critical upgrade   August 2, 2003
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

XP Professional carries the basic office into a far more integrated structure of flipping data, graphics, and presentations from one format to another without any Office family squabbles. No system is perfect, but this beats out the clunker systems from the "competitors"


Crashes / Doesn't Maintain Earlier Version Format Integrity   May 27, 2003
Mr Neil J Waddington (South Australia)
6 out of 10 found this review helpful

After having used Word 6.0C and the same other programs on my computer for years, without hardly ever crashing, OfficeXP2002 was my nightmare in waiting. Once installed on my Win98SE 256/40G, Office XP crashed regularly while reading emails, writing emails and editing Word documents. Explorer also started to crash regularly. I got to know the blue screen really well!

After passing on error messages to MS, they told me it was conflicting with my Nvidia graphics software. Upgrade their driver I was told. After that, my Epson 800 printer wouldn't work. The new Nvidia driver conflicted with a Librarydll file. Had to msconfig and turn Nvidia's flashy controls off at startup. Now the printer works. OfficeXP still crashes, but it seems not mid document, usually when exiting or restarting when one or two other programs are running, thus locking up the entire system. Shutting down never seemed the same also - a hanging Win98 screen!

After reinstalling Win98SE and reading several articles, I went to a MS Win98SE patch html page and updated about 7 updates! My computer still crashes, usually daily, probably because Outlook is always running and I need to run two or three other programs. Never had this problem over the years with Outlook Express always running.

OfficeXP hasn't crashed mid-email or mid-Word document (yet) but my computer hardly ever goes a day without crashing.

OfficeXP's Word will not maintain the formatting integrity of my Word 6 or Word97 documents! You can count on boxes and lines being out of alignment with text. Apparently MS changes the formatting in Word for every new version (to force everyone to upgrade?) Doesn't even maintain formatting integrity when you save a document in an older version (just try opening it up with the older version!!!) The whole thing is a nightmare but I now feel locked in. It will be a loooooog time before I upgrade ever again. One day there'll be an alternative to Word that is truly cross-platform and productive.


Mother's Little Helper   April 13, 2003
Chris Holmes (Corfu, Greece)
0 out of 10 found this review helpful

Bought this for me Mum to go with her birthday laptop. Her emails and photo attachments seem to be getting thru OK, so I guess the books works.