Microsoft Office 2003


Microsoft Office 2003 is an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system. Office 2003 was released to manufacturing on August 19, 2003, and was later released to retail on October 21, 2003. It was the successor to Office XP and the predecessor to Office 2007.
New features in Office 2003 include information rights management; new collaboration features; improved support for SharePoint, smart tags, and XML; and extended use of Office Online services. Office 2003 introduces two new programs to the Office product lineup: InfoPath, a program for designing, filling, and submitting electronic structured data forms; and OneNote, a note-taking program for creating and organizing diagrams, graphics, handwritten notes, recorded audio, and text. It also introduces the Picture Manager graphics software to open, manage, and share digital images.
With the release of Office 2003, Microsoft rebranded the Office productivity suite as an integrated system dedicated to information workers. As a result, Microsoft appended the "Office" branding to the names of all programs. Office 2003 is also the first version with support for Windows XP colors and visual styles, and introduces updated icons.
Office 2003 is the last version of Office to include the menu bar and toolbars across all programs, as well as the last version to include the "97 - 2003" file format as the default file format. It is compatible with Windows 2000 SP3, Windows XP and later, but not with Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, or Windows Me. It is also not supported on Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, or later versions of Windows. It is the last version of Office compatible with Windows 2000, since Office 2007 requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista at the minimum.
Microsoft released a total of three service packs for Office 2003 throughout its lifecycle. Service Pack 1 was released on July 27, 2004, Service Pack 2 was released on September 27, 2005, and Service Pack 3 was released on September 17, 2007.
Mainstream support for Office 2003 ended on April 14, 2009, and extended support ended on April 8, 2014, the same dates that mainstream and extended support ended for Windows XP.

New features

The core applications, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, had only minor improvements from Office XP. Outlook 2003 received improved functionality in many areas, including better email and calendar sharing and information display, complete Unicode support, search folders, colored flags, Kerberos authentication, RPC over HTTP, and Cached Exchange mode. Another key benefit of Outlook 2003 was the improved junk mail filter. Tablet and pen support was introduced in the productivity applications. Word 2003 introduced a reading layout view, document comparison, better change-tracking and annotation/reviewing, a Research Task Pane, voice comments and an XML-based format among other features. Excel 2003 introduced list commands, some statistical functions and XML data import, analysis and transformation/document customization features. Access 2003 introduced a backup command, the ability to view object dependencies, error checking in forms and reports among other features.
Office 2003 features improvements to smart tags such as smart tag Lists, which are defined in XML, by using regular expressions and an extended type library. Smart tag recognition was added to PowerPoint and Access. FrontPage 2003 introduced conditional formatting, Find and Replace for HTML elements, new tools for creating and formatting tables and cells, dynamic templates, Flash support, WebDAV and SharePoint publishing among other features. Publisher 2003 introduced a Generic Color PostScript printer driver for commercial printing. Information Rights Management capabilities were introduced in document productivity applications to limit access to a set of users and/or restrict types of actions that users could perform. Support for managed code add-ins as VSTO solutions was introduced.
Office 2003 was the last version of Microsoft Office to include fully customizable toolbars and menus for all of its applications, the Office Assistant, the ability to slipstream service packs into the original setup files, Office Web Components, and the Save My Settings Wizard, which allowed users to choose whether to keep a locally cached copy of installation source files and several utility resource kit tools. It was also the last Office version to support Windows 2000. A new picture organizer with basic editing features, called Microsoft Office Picture Manager, was included.
Only basic clipart and templates were included on the disc media, with most content hosted online and downloadable from within the Office application. Microsoft advertised Office Online as a major Office 2003 feature "outside the box". Office Online provides how-to articles, tips, training courses, templates, clip art, stock photos and media and downloads.
Office 2003 features broad XML integration throughout resulting in a far more data-centric model. The MSXML 5 library was introduced specifically for Office's XML integration. Office 2003 also has SharePoint integration to facilitate data exchange, collaborated workflow, and publishing. InfoPath 2003 was introduced for collecting data in XML-based forms and templates based on information from databases.

Removed features

Microsoft released five separate editions of Office 2003: Basic, Student and Teacher, Standard, Small Business, and Professional. Retail editions were available in Full or Upgrade versions. The Basic edition was only available to original equipment manufacturers. The Student and Teacher edition was intended for noncommercial use only. All Office 2003 applications were available for purchase as standalone products.
ApplicationBasic
Student and
Teacher		StandardSmall BusinessProfessional
Word
Excel
Outlook
PowerPoint
Publisher
Access
InfoPath

System requirements