Plan and Manage your business more effectively


Increase your desktop efficiency with Microsoft® Office

This feature takes an in-depth look at Office 95. For a sneak preview of Office 97, click on PRODUCTS

Integrated office suites are increasingly being seen as essential to small businesses as they have so many advantages over separate applications.

To get the greatest amount of effective work done with the least effort: this is the primary requirement of any combination of programs that you are going to use on a regular basis in your business. And, for this to be possible, itís crucially important to use programs that work smoothly together ñ programs that are well integrated.

For the small business user, word processing heads the league of most-used applications, with spreadsheets in second place. Behind these are database and drawing programs, and communications software has also joined this repertoire of popular tools. For each of these applications you could use separate programs from separate suppliers, with no claims by any of them to be integrated with the others. But, like fitting a car with four different tyres, itís not to be recommended. Nor is it likely to be cost-effective.

The easiest way of achieving an effective, integrated approach is to install an office suite, a powerful set of separate, full-featured programs that can be run alone when preferred, but which are designed with integration in mind. Office suites come with a central management facility, which simplifies the launching and control of programs. Microsoft offers the most effective and best-selling product in this category: Microsoft Office for Windows 95.

Open advantages

There are three key benefits of integration. First, itís much easier to switch smoothly between programs if theyíve been designed for simultaneous use. Second, itís simple to exchange and link information between modules and programs, such as copying a chart prepared in a spreadsheet into a report in a word processor. You canít afford to waste time with complicated procedures.

For most people, however, the greatest benefit of an integrated approach is that itís so much easier to learn and use the applications if they all have the same look and feel ñ if they use similar terminology, menus, toolbars, and share common resources such as dictionary, thesaurus and help system. When youíve learned how to use the word processor, youíll quickly pick up the spreadsheet, and having mastered printing for one type of document, it will come naturally for the others.

Microsoft Office 95

Microsoft Office for Windows 95 combines Microsoftís most powerful software products in a cohesive package, each program designed to work closely alongside the others, together with additional tools to provide central management.

Quality quintet

You get five main applications with Office 95: Word 95, the top selling word processor; Excel 95, the latest version of the powerful spreadsheet package; Access 95, the database manager, suitable for both end users and developers; PowerPoint 95, the easy-to-use graphics presentation package; and finally Schedule+ 95, which covers time management, PIM (Personal Information Management), and group scheduling, and also has strong links with email. All programs now have many shared facilities, so once youíve learned and used one application, youíll have an easy time with the next.

Power to your elbow

You soon discover the power that these heavyweight applications bring to your desktop.

As a key element, thereís full support for the latest 2.0 version of OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), so data sharing is easy. Also, all Office 95 applications use common File Open dialogue boxes, which offer extended features such as advanced file-finding capabilities that search for files based on specified criteria. You donít even have to open a document to see its contents, as thereís now a preview button in the File Open dialogue.

Productivity keynote

Many of Officeís new features are productivity aids, and some of the best are based on IntelliSense technology. AutoCorrect repairs accidental typing errors automatically, and makes sure that sentences start with a capital letter, while AutoText lets you enter abbreviations to speed up repetitive data entry. Brand new in this version is an even smarter facility called AnswerWizard. When you type a question in plain English, it responds with clear instructions on how to get your work done.

Electronic paper clip

The Office Binder keeps related documents together. Suppose you have various documents prepared on Word, plus a financial spreadsheet from Excel and a business case presentation from PowerPoint, all of which together make up a single report.

By placing them all in a binder, you can work on them together for common tasks, such as applying common styles or logos, spell-checking and page numbering, while retaining the ability to work on them individually too.

Another key tool is the Office Shortcut Bar, which gives you one-click access to frequently-performed tasks, no matter which application programs or files are involved. The Shortcut Bar can be positioned anywhere on your desktop, anchored to top, bottom or side, or automatically hidden when not wanted.

Versatility

Excel 95 has enormous flexibility, especially in charting and simulation, and the use of macros based on Visual Basic adds great scope for automation. In Schedule+ thereís a MeetingWizard that works out a time and location suitable for all participants, and prepares a pre-addressed meeting request that you can send to them. PowerPoint slide or screen presentations can be created easily from a Word outline, by simply clicking on the Present It button. And, as final examples from a long list, both Word and PowerPoint include the WordArt, Equation Editor, and Graph applets that respectively let you add special text effects, equations, and charts to your documents.

So, to maximise your desktop efficiency and plan and manage your business more effectively, Microsoft Office provides the perfect answer. It doesnít take an AnswerWizard to work that out!

For a sneak preview of the next version of Microsoft® Office ó Microsoft® Office 97 ó click on PRODUCTS