Part of the fun of exploring any new application is checking out how everything looks and what it does. We’ve excerpted some of Microsoft Office 2001’s new features and taken screenshots of what they look like.
The Project Gallery is the default startup screen for any of the Office 2001 programs. Users can select a typical blank document — a Word template, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation, for example — or look through the categories to select a template that best suits the project they plan on doing. This screen signals two noteworthy shifts in Microsoft Office: encouraging users to think of their work in project-oriented terms instead of application-oriented ones, and blurring the lines between Microsoft Office programs so the user is working within Office as a whole, instead of a discrete application.
Next: The persistent formatting palette