Prior to 1989, Microsoft Word was originally a DOS application with complex set of commands. It was later added with more graphical features but only available for Mac OS. The first Word for Windows appeared in 1989 and was designed for Windows 3.0.
When Word version 2.0 was released as part of Microsoft Office 3.0 in 1992. Word became the market leader which was partly due to major competitor, WordPerfect, failed to produce Windows version. You can see that most of the basic features we use today are already in Word 2.0.
Office 4.0 was released in 1994. Word was called Word 6.0 at this point despite the fact the previous version number was 2.0. The purpose was to use common version numbering with the Mac OS version. Word 6.0 is the first version of Word that I used, I was still a primary school kid at that time
Word 7.0 was part of Office 95 which released in 1995 for Windows 95. Word is already more than a word processing application at this point, it included drawing tools, multilingual supports etc. The best feature is the real time spelling checking - the red-squiggle line.
When Word 97 released in 1996, it included a most stupid feature ever which had irritated most Office users - Office Assistant (the 'clippy-guy') which in fact wasn't assisting at all.
If I am no mistaken, Word 2000 (Part of Office 2000) released in 1999 was the las t release that support Windows 95. Office macro viruses were getting more widespread. Office Genuine Advantage was introduced at this time which allowed legal copy of Microsoft Office to download updates from the web. The major addition was the clipboard which allowed to hold multiple copied objects at once - very nice feature.
I can't believe they kept Mr Clippy until Word 2002 (Part of Office XP) which released in 2001. I remembered back in those days, I have to ask Mr Clippy to piss off every time I use Office at my University (Mr Clippy comes back again for the next user after you log off from the machine). Clippy was supposed to be switched off by default in Office XP but the university settings were different.
When Office 2003 was released in year 2003, Microsoft Word was renamed as Microsoft Office Word to emphasize Microsoft's intention to make Office application suite into a more integrated Office system. Besides the appearance changes to match Windows XP design, I don't feel any difference from Word 2002.
Word 2007 (Part of Office 2007) was released on 30 jan 2007 took approximately 3 years to develop. This release includes numerous changes. The most obvious one are the Ribbon user interface design and the new XML-based file format (which is incompatible with previous versions). Microsoft claimed the new Ribbon design is result-oriented (as oppose to command-oriented). However, many users complaint about the interface overhaul because they couldn't find the menu items they want. Having said that, majority users are satisfied after 2 months according to a survey conducted by Microsoft.
The next release is Office 14 (There will be no Microsoft Office 13 due to superstition). No announcement is made regarding its release date yet.
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