Microsoft Announces the Preview Program for Office for Windows 95

Company Unveils Full Set of Tools for Making an Easy Transition to Office
for Windows 95

REDMOND, Wash.--June 20, 1995--Microsoft Corp. today announced the
Microsoft Office Preview Program, through which Microsoft will provide
beta copies of Microsoft Office for the Windows 95 operating system to
more than 100,000 prequalified Microsoft customers worldwide.

The Preview Program enables organizations to begin evaluating and planning
their migration to the new applications in Office 95 before the final
product suite is available in reseller channels. The Office Preview
Program includes a full set of migration tools, including the Microsoft
Office for Windows 95 Resource Kit, a guide to product enhancements,
online information that will help customers make the transition, and a
step-by-step planning guide for implementing Office 95.

Office 95 is designed to make it easier for people and organizations to tap
into the full potential of their PCs. The applications in Microsoft Office
95 offer dozens of new enhancements, such as the Answer Wizard, which
provides helpful answers to common questions, and Office Binders, which
help make the creation of compound documents easy. The applications in
Office 95 also take advantage of the robust 32-bit user interface and
architecture of Windows 95. Enhancements include pre-emptive multitasking,
multithreaded operations such as background printing in Word and the
PowerPoint presentation graphics program, queries in Microsoft Access, and
32-bit performance optimization and tuning.

"Microsoft's goal for Office 95 is to help users take full advantage of
their PCs with greater intelligence and discoverability," said Chris
Peters, vice president of the Office product unit at Microsoft. "Of
course, delivering powerful productivity enhancements is important, but we
also want to make it dramatically easier for network administrators and
support engineers to plan and roll out Office 95 across their companies.
That's why we're providing more customers than ever before a head start on
learning about and implementing Office 95, as well as a host of transition
tools to help them plan more effectively."

"We're very excited about Office 95 and plan to move to the suite of
applications within three months after it becomes available," said Bruce
Bemisderfer of Saturn Corp. "The Office Preview Program enables us to get
a jump on training and transitioning to Office for Windows 95. We expect
the move to Office 95 to be a great experience for our users and
administrators alike."

Office for Windows 95 Designed to Ease End-User Transition and Reduce
Support Costs

Microsoft continues to focus on improving the usability and discoverability
of Office applications so users can focus on their work, and not on
learning the software. This focus on ease of use also helps reduce the
support burden for MIS and support engineers. Office 95 will provide many
usability enhancements designed to make the move easy, including the
following:

* IntelliSense technology. IntelliSense technology, introduced in Office
4.3, senses what a user wants to do and intelligently produces the desired
result. In Office 95 there will be even more IntelliSense capabilities,
such as AutoCalculate, SpellIt and AutoComplete.

* Discoverability. Making it easier for users to discover the wide range of
functionality of Office 95 and more fully use the product was a primary
development goal of Office 95. Key examples of discoverability include the
Answer Wizard, TipWizard assistant, Screen Tips and task-based
documentation.

The Answer Wizard, which lets people use common vocabulary to obtain
assistance on specific tasks and guides them through completion, was
developed with the help of Microsoft's Natural Language Processing and
Decision Theory experts. It signifies an evolution in creating
productivity applications that are more discoverable for all levels of
users. In addition, Office 95 includes increased animation, to provide
users with visual feedback so they have a better understanding of many
operations.

* Consistency. A major design goal for Microsoft Office has been to make
the applications consistent with each other and the operating system. In
Office 95, Microsoft Access 95 and Schedule+ 95 are redesigned to be even
more consistent with other members of the Office family. The Office 95
applications are also designed to be consistent with the Windows 95 user
interface and support such features as Screen Tips, Tabbed Dialog Boxes
and Short Cut Menus.

Office for Windows 95 Provides Transition Tools That Help MIS Migrate
Easily

Developing products that make it easy for users to get up to speed quickly
is only part of the migration strategy for Office 95. Microsoft also has
developed a variety of tools and information services to help network
administrators and support engineers make a smooth transition to Office
95.

* Managing file formats. Microsoft Excel 95 and Word 95 use the same file
formats as those in Microsoft Excel version 5.0 and Word version 6.0,
respectively. Therefore, users can share files seamlessly across versions.
In PowerPoint, where the file format has changed, the new versions will
include converters that enable users to share files with other users
working with PowerPoint version 4.0.

* Office Resource Kit. The Microsoft Office for Windows 95 Resource Kit,
which is currently being developed, provides comprehensive technical
documentation on how to plan and implement the deployment of Office 95,
including how to move from previously owned products, as well as upgrade
from existing Microsoft applications. It also will include sample
installation scripts and templates, the Migration Planning Wizard,
Deployment Guide, and file converters.

* Network Administrator Wizard. As many companies have standardized on
Office, customers have requested that the product be easier to implement
across the corporate network. The Network Administrator Wizard enables MIS
to customize the file that controls the installation of Office 95. Like
other Microsoft wizards, it walks the MIS user through the steps to
customize the setup file. MIS can customize specific feature
configurations for each application as well as specific file locations for
any Office 95 application. This makes it dramatically easier to create
custom installation scripts for an entire organization without the need to
install Office 95 one by one on each desktop.

* Microsoft Systems Management Server. Increasingly, MIS departments are
being called upon to provide even greater support to their organizations,
with fewer resources. Microsoft Office 95 will ship with tools that
support implementation using Microsoft Systems Management Server to assist
with software distribution.

* The Microsoft Office MSTV Traincast series is a series of three
television shows that run through August. The shows cover the features,
functionality and new solutions capabilities of Office 95, in addition to
information about migrating to Office 95. Each of these shows can be
ordered from Microsoft and serve as training materials.

Training for Migration Specialists

In addition, Microsoft is extending the Office Preview Program to educate,
train and support value-added resellers (VARs) so they may be better
prepared to help customers migrate to Windows 95 and Office 95. Microsoft
will provide a complete set of migration tools and materials to systems
integrators and Solution Providers, including a technical seminar on how
to migrate to Office 95, the Office Resource Kit, the Office Deployment
Guide and the Office Sample Deployment Plan. Microsoft also will provide a
referral list of certified migration specialists to customers who want
assistance with migrating to Office 95.

Microsoft Office, Standard Edition for Windows 95 will include Microsoft
Excel 95, Word 95, PowerPoint 95 and Schedule+ 95. Microsoft Office,
Professional Edition for Windows 95 will include the above, plus Microsoft
Access 95. Microsoft Office Professional & Bookshelf CD-ROM for Windows
also will be available and includes all of the above, plus special
integration with the Bookshelf '95 CD-ROM reference library. With more
than 12 million users worldwide, Microsoft Office is the world's most
popular office suite.

Microsoft Office, Standard Edition for Windows 95 is scheduled to be
available within 30 days of Windows 95. The Professional Edition for
Windows 95 is scheduled to be available within 60 days following the
availability of Microsoft Office, Standard Edition for Windows 95.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in
software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of
products and services for business and personal use, each designed with
the mission of making it easier for people to take advantage of the full
power of personal computing every day.

Microsoft Corp, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399
206-882-8080,  fax: 206-93MSFAX

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