Computers for Beginners/Office Programs

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Office is commonly defined as a suite of programs made by Microsoft. They can accomplish many daily tasks, and are one of the most commonly used programs of average computer people. At the time of writing, the most recent version of the program is 2007. In other words, the newest "Office" is Office 2007.

There are several programs in the Office suite:

• Access, a database program
• Excel, a spreadsheet program
• Outlook, an email program
• PowerPoint, a presentation program
• Word, a word processor
• Publisher, a document publishing program

Also part of the Microsoft Office suite are: Frontpage, a web publishing program and Visio, a diagram making program.

Office suites are not made only by Microsoft. Some companies have taken their own stab at making these handy bundles of programming, and many have succeeded. If you don't want to shell out serious cash (hundreds of US dollars) for the latest version of Microsoft Office, you should take a look at OpenOffice.org, a free, open-source office suite which offers almost all the features of Microsoft Office and then some. If you wish to have an alternative to Word, try AbiWord.

Once you learn how to use one office program, you can figure out the other ones without much effort.