Software Review of:
Microsoft Office XP 
First Impressions 

There are three consumer versions of the office XP Suite; the Standard Version  includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The Professional Edition adds the Access database program. The Special Edition adds Front Page, Publisher, and includes a Microsoft Intellimouse. This article is a quick look at some of the new or changed features in Office XP; a complete description would be far larger than the PC Alamode. I selected the Standard Version, since I don’t particularly like or need Access. This article will (hopefully) be in two parts: the first will focus on overall, shared program features, while the second (to be published in an upcoming issue) will address individual program issues, and a buying recommendation.

Several articles in the computer press have asserted that Office XP has few changes from Office 2000; I disagree. Office XP’s main thrust is to make it easier to use the programs—a major improvement from my viewpoint. Have you ever found yourself getting very frustrated while using Office, not able to find or master one of the features on its stupifyingly long features list? I know I’ve been there; and a version of Office that tries to make itself easier to use can’t be a bad idea. Improved ease of use is implemented through two approaches: removal of annoyances (like the frequently irritating help character (the paper clip)) and easier identification of applicable features. For those who, like me, find the help character useful, you can still add it back. I use the little cat for my helper.

One of the more controversial “features” of Office XP is its requirement for activation. Activation is a form of copy protection that requires you to contact Microsoft to activate your software. That means dialing up an activation Web site on the Internet and getting some sort of activation code. That should be an automatic part of the installation process, but if you don’t activate the software when you install it, Microsoft turns off certain essential features after 50 uses. Those features include the ability to save a document, for example. If you make major changes to your computer, you may have to reactivate the software, which may require a call to Microsoft. I recognize the need to combat piracy, but this feature could make Microsoft very unpopular — as though it needed more of that.

One significant change in Office XP is its ability to use voice input. That means instead of having to type text into this Word document, I’m actually dictating it into a microphone. Voice recognition programs have been available for several years, and Office XP probably doesn’t  advance the technology.  I understand Office XP’s speech technology was acquired from Lernout and Hauspie; however, I expect that standalone voice recognition programs, like IBM’s ViaVoice, would be superior. The convenience of having voice recognition built into office XP means that the technology now has a greater chance to be used. 

The voice recognition feature of Office XP does seem moderately limited; it produces some rather weird interpretations of my voice.  The first step in using voice recognition is to train it to understand your individual voice.  You do this by a reading a selection of text that office XP displays on the screen.  This training session takes about fifteen minutes.  Additional training sessions are possible if you want to further improve XP’s recognition of your voice.  And I can see, as I dictate this, that I am definitely going to have to do some more training; it may take longer to correct dictated text than to just type it. And with my typing skills, that’s not very complementary.

If speech-to-text conversion is a big advance in usability, the reverse — text-to-speech — is equally useful. Office XP actually looks at Excel entries and reads them aloud to you. Currently, text-to-speech is available only in Excel; hopefully, Microsoft will expand its availability to other programs, and possibly even Windows, later. The Microsoft Knowledge Base has a trick for adding the text-to-speech module to other programs using Visual Basic for Applications, so it can’t be too hard to do.

Are you (like me) a mediocre typist? If you have a writing tablet input device, Office XP will recognize your handwriting and convert it to text. Or if you already have a printed page with text you want to enter into Word, Microsoft provides a separate OCR program (in the Office Tools folder) that uses your scanner to scan the page and send its text to Word. Strangely, this feature is not mentioned. It may not be as good as the OCR program you got with your scanner, but a brief tryout of this feature yielded an error-free conversion of a document.

Have you ever had your computer lock up when you are working on an important document, and lost lots of irreplaceable work? I certainly have. Office XP has better crash recovery features; when an Office XP crash occurs, the program will try to save your work right then before closing. If a program can’t manage to keep from crashing, saving your work first is the least it can do. Unless the Office program has totally locked up your machine, you can try the Microsoft Office Application Recovery program to recover your document. This is a separate program included in the Microsoft Office Tools folder. 

Smart Tags is a great new feature that helps you use the other features of Office XP. A Smart Tag is a small icon that appears on the page when the program recognizes the type of data you are working with. The Smart Tag tells you what options are available for that data. For example, a Paste Object Smart Tag, which tells me several options I have for pasting text I have copied to the clipboard. 

Speaking of the clipboard, Microsoft has expanded the capability of the Windows clipboard so that it can now hold 24 items instead of Windows’ standard one item. Now Office 2000 had expanded the clipboard to handle 12 items, and one could argue that’s really enough. But Office XP makes it easier to use the clipboard by creating a Task Pane. Task Panes are small windows that open to the right of a document and provide useful information. I can click on any item on the clipboard, and Office XP will insert that item into the current document.

The Reveal Formatting pane is Microsoft’s attempt to emulate WordPerfect’s reveal codes feature. I’m not sure it matches the WordPerfect feature, but at least gives you an option to directly change the coding of your document. In Word, task panes are also available for New Documents, Clipboard, Mail Merge, Insert Clip Art, and several other features. You can turn off the Task Pane once you feel you don’t need its help.

Office XP applications are very adept at publishing documents on the Web. Office has been moving that way for some time, but Office XP is the best yet. It has numerous features that make Web publishing easy and attractive. For example, you can use Picture Compression to make a picture smaller so it can be displayed on a Web page and load faster. The Picture Compression dialog box lets you compress the picture to look good on the medium of your choice: print, on-screen, or Web.

The toolbar interface in Office XP has been changed somewhat, but nothing that will make it jarringly unfamiliar. The toolbar buttons have a different look, as have some of the dialog buttons. I suspect we’ll see similar changes throughout Windows XP when it’s released in October. It’s a flatter look, easier to tell when you have selected a button. I suspect it will be much easier to tell which button you have selected when you’re using a notebook computer.

Previous versions of Office let you insert an organizational chart into a document. That was handy, but Office XP gives you eight different types of diagrams you can insert into its documents. In addition to the organizational chart, you can now choose a cycle diagram, a radial diagram, a pyramid diagram, a Venn diagram, or a target diagram to place on a document. You can choose the diagram you want to use from a Diagram Gallery. 

Microsoft keeps making its Help features better, and Office XP is a good example. Even though you turn off the pesky little help character, you can still ask the Help engine a question any time by just typing it in the field in the box in the upper right hand corner. There is also better help on the Web.

Next time I’ll look at some of the features of individual programs within the Office XP suite. Meanwhile, if you have already bought the suite and need help, I recommend the always excellent Special Edition, Using Office XP or any of the Special Edition, Using (fill in the program name) published by Que.