Microsoft Office 97

Microsoft Office 97 is a major milestone release of Microsoft Office, which includes hundreds of new features and improvements over its predecessor, Microsoft Office 95. Office 97 introduced "Command Bars," a paradigm in which menus and toolbars were made more similar in capability and visual design. It also featured natural language systems and sophisticated grammar checking. It was published on CD-ROM as well as on a set of 44 3½-inch floppy disks. Released on November 19, 1996,[2] the suite runs on Windows NT 3.51 SP5, Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 SP2, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows Me. It is the last version to support Windows NT 3.51 as Office 2000 requires Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 SP3 or a later version of Windows. Two service releases (SR-1 and SR-2) were released for Office 97. SR-2 solved the year 2000 problem in Office 97.[3]

Features
Microsoft Office 97 is the first version of Office to feature the Office Assistant, a feature designed to assist users by the way of an interactive animated character, which interfaced with the Office help content. The default assistant was "Clippit", nicknamed "Clippy", a paperclip. The Office Assistant feature was also included in its successor, Office 2000, as well as in Office XP (hidden by default) and 2003 (not installed by default), before being removed entirely in Office 2007.

Office 97 is also the first Microsoft product to include product activation. The Brazilian versions of Office 97 Small Business Edition and Publisher 98 required it.[4]

Assisted support options and security updates for Office 97 ended on January 16, 2004. Mainstream hotfix support for Office 97 ended on August 31, 2001, while extended hotfix support ended on February 28, 2002.[5]

Two Office 97 applications featured easter eggs: Microsoft Word 97 contained a hidden pinball game and Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator.[6][7]

Editions
The vivid cover art emphasized the fifth "puzzle piece", Microsoft Access.

Office 97 was released in five editions. They are as follows:

Contemporary programs
Some additional programs were branded as a member of the Office 97 family but were not included in any of the editions:
 * Microsoft FrontPage 97
 * Microsoft FrontPage 98
 * Microsoft Project 98
 * Microsoft Team Manager 97