NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
MS Office 97 Service Release 1
by Bob Frye - December 97


For those of us that use Microsoft Office 97 (Standard, Small Business Edition or Professional), or use one of its component applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access or Outlook), I recommend getting this service release on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM version not only includes the basic service release to fix the well publicized conversion problem between Word 97 and previous Word versions, but an additional 100+ MB ValuPack of application extras such as file viewers, clip art, maps, sounds, presentation enhancements and utilities.

The basic service release is fully automated and only updates those applications you have installed that are out of date. It took me about 15 minutes and added about 8 MB of files. The ValuPack is an eclectic collection to enhance Office 97 and its various components. You select which additions you want to add to your system.

Help Files - for using Visual Basic with Outlook, Office Binder, MS Graph and MS Map. Also included is a HTML version of Building Applications with Microsoft Access97 developer's guide for creating and distributing database solutions using Visual Basic. There's a copy of Internet Explorer 3.02 if you need a browser.

Animated Cursors - for Word, Excel and Outlook. One animation changes your cursor to a printer with printing pages when you print a document. You can use animated GIF clip art to accent Web pages to draw attention to a specific item on your Web page.

Avery Wizard - adds an icon to the Word tool bar to print text on any Avery product. It gives you the choice to print one label or the whole sheet.

Viewers - for Excel 97, PowerPoint 97 and Word 97 can be used to open, view, copy or print files even if you don't have these applications installed. The license permits you to freely distribute these viewers with files you create, so others can look at your latest masterpiece too, even if they don't have Office 97. You can use these viewers to view, copy and print files created with earlier versions of these applications, which is especially useful for accessing archive files.

Active Movie player - for use with streaming audio and video on the Internet. Included is a tool to convert PowerPoint slide shows to streaming format.

Camcorder - saves actions and sounds that you perform on your computer as a movie file. Others can play this movie back using the Camcorder utility to use as a tutorial, for example.

There is much more: 150 true Type fonts, templates, sounds for Office actions, a Web publishing wizard, graphic import filter for Kodak Flash Pix (*.fpx) and MS PictureIt! (*.fix) files.

This service release is free to registered MS Office 97 users. Call Microsoft at 800/426-9400 to order this service release. You'll need the product identification number found on the certificate of authenticity that came with Office 97. Delivery took about three weeks by mail. You can also download the service release at http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Office97/ServiceRelease/.

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