Microsoft Office 4.0

Microsoft Office 4.0
Type	Office suite
Developer	Microsoft
Released	January 17, 1994 August 1994 (Macintosh
Licensing	Proprietary
Operating system	Windows NT Windows Mac OS
Platform	IA-32, Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, Motorola 68000
Predecessor	Microsoft Office 3.0 (1992)
Successor	Microsoft Office 95 (1995)

Microsoft Office 4.0 is a major release of the Microsoft Office productivity suite, released by Microsoft in January 17, 1994 for Windows and in August 1994 for Macintosh. Succeeding Microsoft Office 3.0, it was the third major release for the Windows operating system, and the fourth on the Macintosh as version 4.2, as well as the first for Windows NT as 4.2.

Features

Its main components include Word 6.0, Excel 4.0a, PowerPoint 3.0, and Mail. Microsoft announced the product on October 17, 1993; version 5.0 of Excel and version 4.0 of PowerPoint were not completed in time for inclusion in Office 4.0. As a result, Microsoft offered a coupon with every purchase of Office 4.0 to customers to freely upgrade to the newer versions of Excel and PowerPoint, which were eventually released in April 1994. Microsoft's rival Lotus Software took advantage of this mishap and mocked Microsoft in advertisements for its Lotus SmartSuite. Microsoft Access is included in the Professional edition of Office 4.0, which sold for US$99 extra over the standard suite.

Microsoft Office 4.0 increased cohesion and consistent design between the different applications in the suite. The Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) 2.0 ability links content between different documents. IntelliSense is another new feature for predictive automation.

Microsoft Office 4.3 was released on June 2, 1994, as a Professional edition, containing the updated versions of Excel and PowerPoint within the suite as well as version 2.0 of Access. The Standard edition was released as Microsoft Office 4.2 for Windows 3.1. Microsoft Office for NT was released on July 3, 1994, and was the first 32-bit version of Microsoft Office and hence native for Windows NT 3.1 (i386, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC platforms). However, the PowerPoint component remained in 16-bit. The suite was superseded by Microsoft Office 95 for Windows 95.

In September 1994, Microsoft Office 4.2 for the Macintosh (M68k and Power Macintosh platforms) was released. The Macintosh version is also cohesive and now shares an identical interface with the Windows version of Office 4.x. The Standard Version 4.2.1 was a maintenance release in 1995. In 1997, another updated release came with essential business tools and Microsoft Bookshelf CD-ROM reference library.