Table of Contents
MS Office – Introduction
MS Office Applications and its Functions
Knowledge about MS Office has become vital not only for competitive exams
but also in our day-to-day lives. In this article, we shall have a brief
introduction to MS office and its features.
MS Office – Introduction
MS Office or simply Office is a family of server software, and services
developed by Microsoft.
It was first declared by Bill Gates on 1/08/1988, in Las Vegas.
The 1 version of Office contained MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint
st
Throughout these years, Office applications have improved significantly with
shared features such as an integration checker, common spell data, etc.
There are many versions of the office targeting different end-users and
computing environments.
The most widely used, and the original version, is the desktop version,
available for PCs running the Mac OS, L, Linux, and Windows operating
systems.
MS Office is accessible in 35 different languages and is supported by most
Linux, Windows, and Mac variants.
It consists of Word, Access, OneNote Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and
Publisher applications.
MS Office was initially developed to automate the physical office work with a
collection of purpose-built applications.
Each of the applications in MS Office provides a specific knowledge or office
domain such as:
1.
1. Microsoft Word: Helps in developing text documents.
2. Microsoft Excel: Generates simple to complex data/numerical spreadsheets.
3. Microsoft PowerPoint: Helps in developing professional multimedia
presentations.
4. Microsoft Access: Used for Database management application.
5. Microsoft Publisher: Helps in developing and publishing marketing materials.
6. Microsoft OneNote: Helps the user to neatly organize their notes.
Besides desktop applications, MS Office also has an online version.
MS Office Applications and its
Functions
Presently, Microsoft Office 2016 version is being used across the globe and
all its applications are widely used for personal and professional purposes.
Given below are the some applications of MS Office along with each of their
functions.
MS Word
First released on 25 October 1983.
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The extension for Doc files is “.doc”.
It is useful in creating text documents.
Templates can be developed for Professional use with the help of Microsoft
Word.
Images, animations, Work Art, colors, can be added along with the text in the
same file which can be downloaded in the form of a document.
Writers can use this application for writing/ editing their work.
MS Excel
Largely used for making spreadsheets.
A spreadsheet includes grids in the form of rows and columns which is easy
to manage and can be used as a replacement for paper.
It is an application for data processing.
MS Excel can be used to manage and save large data tabular format.
Calculations can be done in seconds based on the large amount of data
entered into the cells of a spreadsheet.
Files are saved in“.xls” format.
MS PowerPoint
It was released on 20 April 1987.
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Used to generate and format audiovisual presentations.
Each presentation consists of various slides displaying data/ information.
Each slide may have graphics, audio, video, text, bullet numbering, tables
etc.
The PowerPoint presentations are in“.ppt”.
Used for professional purposes.
Using PowerPoint, presentations can be made more interesting.
MS Access
It was released on 13 November 1992.
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It is also known as Database Management Software (DBMS).
MS Access can be used to create Tables, queries, forms, and reports.
Data can be imported and exported into other formats.
The files are stored in“.accdb” format.
MS Outlook
It was released on 16 January 1997.
th
It is an information management system for personal use.
It works as both a single-user application and multi-user software.
Its features also include journal logging, calendaring, task managing, contact
managing, and web browsing.
It is the Office Suite’s email client.
These files are stored in “.pst” format.
MS OneNote
It was released on 19 November 2003.
th
It is an application for taking notes.
Initially, it was a part of the Office suite only. Later, the developers made it
free.
The notes may contain images, text, tables as well.
The OneNote files are in“.one” format.
It works both online and offline and is a multiple-user application.
Along with the applications mentioned above, various other applications are
included in the MS Office suite. The above mentioned are the most
commonly used ones and questions based on the same may be asked in the
upcoming exams.
