Microsoft Office 95

Microsoft Office 95

The box for Microsoft Office 95 professional.
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	August 24, 1995; 16 years ago (1995-08-24) [1]
Operating system	Microsoft Windows 95
Type	Office suite
License	Proprietary EULA

Microsoft Office for Windows 95 was the version of Microsoft Office designed specifically for Windows 95, succeeding Office 4.3. Previously, Microsoft had released Office 4.2 for Windows NT for several architectures, ^[2] which included 32-bit Word 6.0 for Windows NT and Excel 5.0 for Windows NT ^[3], however PowerPoint 4.0 was 16-bit. With Office for Windows 95, all components in the suite were 32-bit. All the Office 95 applications have OLE 2 capacity - moving data automatically from various programs. Office 95 was replaced by Office 97.

Editions

Office 95 was available in two versions. They contained the following applications^[4]:

Application	Standard Edition	Professional Edition
Word for Windows 95[5]	Yes	Yes
Excel for Windows 95[6]	Yes	Yes
PowerPoint for Windows 95[7]	Yes	Yes
Schedule+ for Windows 95[8]	Yes	Yes
Access for Windows 95[9]	No	Yes
Bookshelf for Windows 95[10]	No	Yes

The icons for the applications in the Professional edition.

Office for Windows 95 is named version 7.0 to match Word's version number. The standard version consisted of Word 7.0, Excel 7.0, PowerPoint 7.0, and Schedule+ 7.0. The professional edition contained all of the items in the standard version plus Access 7.0. If the professional version was purchased in CD-ROM form, it also included Bookshelf 95.

The application versions also skipped some numbers in order to show that they were contemporary. The previous Word 6.0 had the highest number, so 7.0 were chosen for all of them. Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0, Schedule+ 1.0 and Access 2.0 were the predecessors to Office 95's applications. Microsoft Outlook was not included yet and used to be bundled with Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5.

Contemporary components

Several additional programs were "compatible with Microsoft Office 95":

• Microsoft Project for Windows 95 (Version 4.1a)
• Microsoft Publisher for Windows 95 (Version 3.0)
• Microsoft FrontPage 1.1
• Office Small Business Pack for Office 95

Other contemporary Microsoft products were:

• Microsoft Works 4.0
• Microsoft Money 4.0

Updated releases

There were no downloadable service packs or service releases for Office for Windows 95. Instead, two updated versions, 7.0a ^[11] and 7.0b ^[12] were released to fix bugs. They could be ordered from Microsoft Support. A downloadable update was released in 1999 to address minor Y2K issues. ^[13]

Versions of Microsoft Jet database engine, 3.0 and 3.5 used by Access for Windows 95 (Access 7.0) and the later released, Access 97 respectively, had a critical issue which made these versions of Access unusable on a computer with more than 1 GB of memory. ^[14] While this problem was fixed for Jet 3.5/Access 97, it was never fixed for Jet 3.0/Access 95.

Requirements

Microsoft Office 95 requires a 386DX or higher CPU, and either Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows NT 3.51. 8 MB of RAM is the minimum for a Windows 95 installation. 28 MB of hard disk space is required for the compact installation, 55 MB for the 'typical' and 88 MB for the full install.

Easter eggs in Office 95

Microsoft Excel contained a hidden Doom-like game called "Hall of Tortured Souls", crediting the application's writers.

References

1. ^ [1] Office 95 article
2. ^ Microsoft readies supporting versions of Microsoft Excel and Word for Windows NT The PowerPC
3. ^ Microsoft announced Word 6.0 and Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Windows NT Workstation
4. ^ Microsoft Press, Issue #3 1997, sales catalogue Part No. 098-69985
5. ^ Microsoft Word for Windows 95 - Step by step: ISBN 1-55615-828-9
6. ^ Microsoft Excel for Windows 95 - Step by step: ISBN 1-55615-825-4
7. ^ Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows 95 - Step by step: ISBN 1-55615-829-7
8. ^ 10 Minute Guide to Schedule+ for Windows 95^{[dead link]}
9. ^ Running Microsoft Access for Windows 95: ISBN 1-55615-886-6
10. ^ Microsoft Bookshelf for Windows 95 (Open Library)
11. ^ List of Fixed Bugs in Word 7.0a for Windows 95
12. ^ OFF95: Summary List of Fixed Bugs in MS Office Version 7.0b
13. ^ Microsoft offers Y2K patch for Office 95
14. ^ "Out of memory" error starting Microsoft Access

External links

• This Suite smells of success: MS Office 95 review of new features