Microsoft Office 2000

Microsoft Office 2000
Developer	Microsoft
Type	Office suite
Release date	June 10, 1999
Discontinued	July 14, 2009
Latest release version	Service Pack 3 (SP3) October 21, 2002
Operating system	Windows 95 or later; Windows NT 4.0 (SP3) or later
Licensing	Proprietary commercial software
Website	microsoft.com/office (archived 1999-09-22)
Preceded by	Microsoft Office 97 (1996)
Succeeded by	Microsoft Office XP (2001)

Microsoft Office 2000 (version 9.0) is a release of Microsoft Office, an office suite for Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on March 29, 1999, and released on June 10, 1999, it is the successor to Microsoft Office 97 and the predecessor to Microsoft Office XP. It comes in five different editions – Standard, Small Business, Professional, Premium, and Developer – the most comprehensive of which is Office 2000 Developer. A Mac OS equivalent, Microsoft Office 2001, was released on October 11, 2000.

Microsoft Office 2000 requires Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 SP3 at a minimum, meaning it is incompatible with Windows NT 3.51 and earlier versions of Windows. It is not officially supported on Windows Vista and later versions.

Microsoft released three service packs for Microsoft Office 2000 throughout its lifecycle. Mainstream support for Office 2000 ended on June 30, 2004, and extended support ended on July 14, 2009.

New features

Microsoft Office 2000 includes HTML document creation and publishing, Internet collaboration features such as integration with NetMeeting, COM add-in support, improved compliance with the year 2000, and interface improvements, including personalized menus and toolbars that omit infrequently used commands from view.

The Office Assistant was updated in Microsoft Office 2000, utilizing Microsoft Agent technology instead of Microsoft Actor as it did in Office 97. Going along with this, the Office Assistant characters were converted to use the technology. Some had their appearances changed: Clippit, Office Logo, and Kairu (in releases of Microsoft Office that included the character) were redesigned and reanimated. Scribble was replaced by Links, Power Pup was replaced by Rocky, and Hoverbot was replaced by F1.

Description

Microsoft Office 2000 was designed as a fully 32-bit suite of software. All Office 2000 applications support Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), which allows moving data automatically between various programs.

Microsoft Office 2000 was the first version of Office to use Windows Installer technology. This allowed service packs to be slipstreamed into the original installation files. The first update was called Service Release 1 (SR-1). Subsequent updates were called service packs. Service Pack 3, which was released on November 20, 2002, was the last service pack.

All retail editions of Microsoft Office 2000 sold in Australia, Brazil, China, France, and New Zealand, and academic copies sold in Canada and the United States, required the user to activate the product via the Internet. In the United States, after the release of SR-1, this requirement was extended to all copies that included it. Product activation is, however, disabled in Office 2000 after April 15, 2003.

Microsoft Office 2000 had easter eggs, most of which were removed in SR-1. For example, Microsoft Excel contained a hidden game called Dev Hunter; Microsoft Access had a hidden 8-ball toy; and Microsoft Word had team development credits.

Mainstream support for Microsoft Office 2000 ended on June 30, 2004, and extended support ended on July 14, 2009. It was the last version of Microsoft Office to support Windows 95.

Editions

Five different editions of Office 2000 were available:

Office programs	Standard	Small Business	Professional	Premium	Developer
Word 2000	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Excel 2000	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Outlook 2000	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PowerPoint 2000	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Publisher 2000	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Small Business Tools	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Access 2000	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
FrontPage 2000	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
PhotoDraw 2000	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Developer Tools and SDK	No	No	No	No	Yes
Visio 2000	No	No	No	No	No
Project 2000	No	No	No	No	No
MapPoint 2000	No	No	No	No	No
Vizact 2000	No	No	No	No	No

Microsoft Office 2000 Personal was an additional SKU, solely designed for the Japanese market. It included Word 2000, Excel 2000, and Outlook 2000. This compilation would later become widespread as Microsoft Office 2003 Basic.

MapPoint, Project, Visio, and Vizact also used the Microsoft Office 2000 brand, but were only available as standalone programs.

External links

• Microsoft Office 2000 at Microsoft (archived 1999-09-22)
• Microsoft Office 2000 at Wikipedia