Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center

Product Summary

Product: Office 2000 Standard Version: 9.0 Category: Compliant Operating System: 32-Bit Win Language: Hebrew Release Date: 25 Mar 1999 Operational Range: - Prerequisites: None Product Dependencies: Product specific; see the links to product guides in the table below. Clock Dependencies: Product specific; see the links to product guides in the table below. Last Updated: 16 Jun 1999

Product Details

Product Maintenance: While Microsoft continues to recommend that customers install the most current Service Pack/Release for non-Year 2000 reasons, we understand that, for many reasons, this may not be possible. In order to aid our customers' Year 2000 efforts, Microsoft intends to maintain Office Standard 2000 version 9.0 as compliant through January 1, 2001. Newer Service Packs are also to be maintained as compliant, and may include additional non-Year 2000 updates. This is intended to minimize the Year 2000 as a reason to upgrade. Operational Range for Data: Product specific; see the table below. The following table lists products in Office 2000 Standard, summarizes how they handle dates, and lists their operational ranges. For more information, see links to specific product guides. Product name and link to product guide Summary of how product handles dates Operational range for data Compliance rating Excel 2000 Dates are stored as numeric values and formatted according to one of several default formats, the most common being the system short date. If the system short date is a 2-digit format, even if the user enters a 4-digit year, it displays as two digits. To avoid this, users can change their system short date to a 4-digit format. 01/01/1900 through 12/31/9999 Compliant Outlook 2000 Dates are stored and manipulated as full dates (for example, March 15, 2005) and are displayed in 2- and 4-digit formats according to the format selected by the user. 04/01/1601 through 08/31/4500 Compliant PowerPoint 2000 Dates are stored and calculated in a 4-digit format. System dependent Compliant Word 2000 Dates are stored as simple text strings or as a 32-bit integer. The date is represented by a 4-digit year. Dates saved with versions of documents retain their 4-digit year designations regardless of display. 01/01/1901 through 12/31/2411 Compliant There are some simple steps users can take to avoid having confusing date formats in their Office programs, such as using 4-digit years and changing the date settings in their operating system. Even in those Office programs that are not necessarily used for performing calculations, such as Word and PowerPoint, it is a good idea for users to use 4-digit years so that they and others who work in their documents can differentiate between dates. It is easy to change how the date is read and displayed so that years are presented as four digits. That is, the operating system date settings can be changed so that when 2/23/01 is entered, the program automatically displays the year in four digits as 2/23/2001. Planning for 4-digit-year display is important in programs such as Excel, where column widths may be fixed by the worksheet author with widths that are too narrow for 4-digit years. To change the system date format to display 4-digit years: On the Windows Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click the Regional Settings icon, and then click the Date tab. In the Short date style box, click a format that uses a 4-digit year ("yyyy"). In Microsoft Windows 98, users can change the way 2-digit years are interpreted. Instead of having the program interpret 2-digit years between 1930-2029 (the default time period), the period can be changed--to between 1950-2049, for example. Changing the operating system may help avoid date mistakes in the Office software. Because this change has broad impact on 2-digit date handling, including that in Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), before making the change, users should consider the instances of where 2-digit years may be handled in Office or in their operating system. To change the way 2-digit years are interpreted: On the Windows Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click the Regional Settings icon, and then click the Date tab. In the When a two-digit year is entered, interpret as a year between box, change the upper-limit year in the rightmost box. The lower-limit year automatically changes as the upper-limit changes. Common date-handling across all Office programs: Except where noted by a product guide, Office programs get their Year 2000-related date information from core Office code. The code uses a 100-year date window: anything before a certain point is assumed to be in the 1900s, and anything after that point is in the 2000s. Unless the user specifies otherwise, the code assumes that when a user enters a 2-digit year with a value from 00 to 29, they mean the years 2000-2029, and if they enter 30 to 99, they mean the years 1930-1999. The user can change the date window in Windows 98 by following the procedure above to change the way 2-digit years are interpreted. Or they can change the date in the registry by creating or navigating to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\Calendars\TwoDigitYearMax, adding or finding the string value "1," and then changing that valueÆs data to reflect the end year wanted. If the user changes the end year on the Date tab in Regional Settings to "2050," 2-digit values from 00 to 49 are interpreted as the years 2000-2049, and those values from 50 to 99 are interpreted as the years 1950-1999. For the shared technology Visual Basic for Applications version 6.0--which can be used to create compliant solutions based on Office programs--these same rules apply to all dates whether the date is used by an intrinsic function, it is directly entered into an Office program, or its information is assigned to a file attribute using VBA. For more information, see the Visual Basic for Applications 6.0 product guide, which will be available in April. For Office setup functionality, because the Microsoft Windows installer uses dates to compare information already stored on a system, the installer relies on system date operations to ensure Year 2000 and backward compatibility. The Office Find Fast utility uses dates to determine how often to update information and as search criteria for users in a programÆs Open dialog box (File menu). Find Fast reads in dates from either system date calls or Office documents and then stores the dates in full 4-digit format. Two-digit shortcut handling: Some programs support 2-digit shortcuts. For information about how a specific program converts 2-digit years to 4-digit formats, search for the product in the Products list in the Year 2000 Product Guide. Common date usage errors: If a date is pasted from one program into another using only the last two digits of the year, the date might be interpreted differently than the originating program interpreted it. Example: The date January 1, 1915 is in a non-Excel program. The date is copied, but because the system settings are "M/d/yy," all that is copied is the text "1/1/15." When "1/1/15" is pasted into Excel, Excel interprets the date as January 1, 2015. Such an issue can also occur when one program is using an "M/d/yy" format while another is using a "d/M/yy" format. Due to the ambiguous nature of text dates, there is potential for error. Serial dates should be used whenever possible and great care taken when transferring text dates. For more information about common date usage issues in a specific program, search for the product in the Products list in the Year 2000 Product Guide. Testing guidelines and recommendations: In general, avoid testing in a production environment or with nonduplicated production files because side effects with other noncompliant products cannot be predicted. Interoperability testing with other Microsoft Office products can be conducted safely. For product-specific testing guidelines and recommendations, search for the product in the Products list in the Year 2000 Product Guide.

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ANY MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENTS MADE TO YOU IN THE COURSE OF PROVIDING YEAR 2000 RELATED UPDATES, YEAR 2000 DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS, OR REMEDIATION SERVICES (IF ANY) ARE SUBJECT TO THE YEAR 2000 INFORMATION AND READINESS DISCLOSURE ACT (112 STAT. 2386). IN CASE OF A DISPUTE, THIS ACT MAY REDUCE YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS REGARDING THE USE OF ANY SUCH STATEMENTS, UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED BY YOUR CONTRACT OR TARIFF.

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