HISTORY
A full-featured word processing program for Windows and Mac OS X from Microsoft. Available stand-alone or as part of the Microsoft Office suite, Word contains rudimentary desktop publishing capabilities and is the most widely used word processing program on the market. Word files are commonly used as the format for sending text documents via e-mail because almost every user with a computer can read a Word document by using the Word application, a Word viewer or a word processor that imports the Word format (Microsoft Word Viewer). Word 6 for Windows NT was the first 32-bit version of the product,] released with Microsoft Office for Windows NT around the same time as Windows 95. It was a straightforward port of Word 6.0. Starting with Word 95, releases of Word were named after the year of its release, instead of its version number.
Word 2010 allows more customization of the Ribbon, adds a Backstage view for file management, has improved document navigation, allows creation and embedding of screenshots, and integrates with Word Web App.[
Binary formats (Word 97–2007)
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the default Word document format (.DOC) became a de facto standard of document file formats for Microsoft Office users. There are different versions of "Word Document Format" used by default in Word 97–2007. Each binary word file is an OLE Compound File, a hierarchical file system within a file.According to Joel Spolsky, Word Binary File Format is extremely complex mainly because its developers had accommodate an overwhelming number of features and prioritize performance over anything else.
As with all OLE Compound Files, Word Binary Format consists of "storages", which are analogues to computer folders, and "streams", which are similar to computer files. Each storage may contain streams or other storages. Each Word Binary File must contain a stream called "WordDocument" stream and this stream must start with a File Information Block (FIB). FIB serves as the first point of reference for locating everything else, such as where the text in a Word document starts, ends, what version of Word created the document and other attributes.
Word 2007 and later continue to support the DOC file format, although it is no longer the default.
Image formats
Word can import and display images in common bitmap formats such as JPG and GIF. It can also be used to create and display simple line-art. No version of Microsoft Word has support for the common SVG vector image format.
WordArt
WordArt enables drawing text in a Microsoft Word document such as a title, watermark, or other text, with graphical effects such as skewing, shadowing, rotating, stretching in a variety of shapes and colors and even including three-dimensional effects. Users can apply formatting effects such as shadow, bevel, glow, and reflection to their document text as easily as applying bold or underline.. Users can also spell-check text that uses visual effects, and add text effects to paragraph styles.
Macros
A Macro is a rule of pattern that specifies how a certain input sequence (often a sequence of characters) should be mapped to an output sequence according to defined process. Frequently used or repetitive sequences of keystrokes and mouse movements can be automated. Like otherMicrosoft Office documents, Word files can include advanced macros and even embedded programs. The language was originally WordBasic, but changed to Visual Basic for Applications as of Word 97.
This extensive functionality can also be used to run and propagate viruses in documents. The tendency for people to exchange Word documents via email, USB flash drives, andfloppy disks made this an especially attractive vector in 1999. A prominent example was the Melissa virus, but countless others have existed.
These macro viruses were the only known cross-platform threats between Windows and Macintosh computers and they were the only infection vectors to affect any Mac OS Xsystem up until the advent of video codec trojans in 2007. Microsoft released patches for Word X and Word 2004 that effectively eliminated the macro problem on the Mac by 2006.
Word's macro security setting, which regulates when macros may execute, can be adjusted by the user, but in the most recent versions of Word, is set to HIGH by default, generally reducing the risk from macro-based viruses, which have become uncommon.
Bullets and numbering
Microsoft Word supports bullet lists and numbered lists. It also features a numbering system that helps add correct numbers to pages, chapters, headers, footnotes, and entries of tables of content; these numbers automatically change to correct ones as new items are added or existing items are deleted. Bullets and numbering can be applied directly to paragraphs and convert them to lists. Word 97 through 2003, however, had problems adding correct numbers to numbered lists. In particular, a second irrelevant numbered list might have not started with number one, but instead resumed numbering after the last numbered list. Although Word 97 supported a hidden marker that said the list numbering must restart afterwards, the command to insert this marker (Restart Numbering command) was only added in Word 2003. However, if one cut the first item of the listed and pasted it as another item, e.g. fifth, the restart marker would have moved with it and the list would have restarted in the middle instead of at the top.
Users can also create tables in Word. Depending on the version, Word can perform simple calculations. Formulae are supported as well.
AutoSummarize
AutoSummarize highlights passages or phrases that it considers valuable. The amount of text to be retained can be specified by the user as a percentage of the current amount of text.
According to Ron Fein of the Word 97 team, AutoSummarize cuts wordy copy to the bone by counting words and ranking sentences. First, AutoSummarize identifies the most common words in the document (barring "a" and "the" and the like) and assigns a "score" to each word - the more frequently a word is used, the higher the score. Then, it "averages" each sentence by adding the scores of its words and dividing the sum by the number of words in the sentence - the higher the average, the higher the rank of the sentence. "It's like the ratio of wheat to chaff," explains Fein.
AutoSummarize was removed from Microsoft Word for Mac OS X 2011, although it was present in Word for Mac 2008. AutoSummarize was removed from the Office 2010 release version (14) as well.
| Year Released | Name | Version | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Word for Windows 1.0 | ||
| 1990 | Word for Windows 1.1 | 1.1 | Code-named Bill the Cat |
| 1990 | Word for Windows 1.1a | 1.1a | For Windows 3.1. On March 25, 2014 Microsoft made the source code to Word for Windows 1.1aavailable to the public via the Computer History Museum. |
| 1991 | Word for Windows 2.0 | 2.0 | Code-named Spaceman Spiff |
| 1993 | Word for Windows 6.0 | 6.0 | Code-named T3 (renumbered 6 to bring Windows version numbering in line with that of DOS version, Mac OS version and also WordPerfect, the main competing word processor at the time; also a 32-bit version for Windows NT only) |
| 1995 | Word 95 | 7.0 | Included in Office 95 |
| 1997 | Word 97 | 8.0 | Included in Office 97 |
| 1998 | Word 98 | 8.5 | Only sold as part of Office 97 Powered By Word 98, which was only available in Japan and Korea.[citation needed] |
| 1999 | Word 2000 | 9.0 | Included in Office 2000 |
| 2001 | Word 2002 | 10.0 | Included in Office XP |
| 2003 | Office Word 2003 | 11.0 | Included in Office 2003 |
| 2006 | Office Word 2007 | 12.0 | Included in Office 2007; released to businesses on November 30, 2006, released worldwide to consumers on January 30, 2007 |
| 2010 | Word 2010 | 14.0 | Included in Office 2010 |
| 2013 | Word 2013 | 15.0 | Included in Office 2013 |
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