Key facts

  • Microsoft Word began as Multi-Tool Word in 1983; it became the standard word processor for structured documents, templates, styles, tables and mail me...
  • Microsoft Excel was first released for Macintosh in 1985 and for Windows in 1987;
  • Microsoft PowerPoint was created by Forethought in 1987 and acquired by Microsoft in the same year;
  • Microsoft Access was first released in 1992; it combines tables, queries, forms and reports for small to medium relational database applications.
  • Visual Basic for Applications reached Excel through Excel 5.0 in 1993;

Key Points at a Glance

  1. 1

    Microsoft Word began as Multi-Tool Word in 1983; it became the standard word processor for structured documents, templates, styles, tables and mail merge.

  2. 2

    Microsoft Excel was first released for Macintosh in 1985 and for Windows in 1987; it replaced manual worksheets with formula-based calculation, charts and data analysis.

  3. 3

    Microsoft PowerPoint was created by Forethought in 1987 and acquired by Microsoft in the same year; it became the main presentation tool in the Office suite.

  4. 4

    Microsoft Access was first released in 1992; it combines tables, queries, forms and reports for small to medium relational database applications.

  5. 5

    Visual Basic for Applications reached Excel through Excel 5.0 in 1993; VBA made Office automation, macros and custom procedures examinable computer-application topics.

  6. 6

    Office Open XML was standardised as ECMA-376 in 2006 and ISO/IEC 29500 in 2008; .docx, .xlsx and .pptx are package-based XML formats.

  7. 7

    PivotTable technology in Excel summarises large data ranges by fields, filters and aggregations; it is a high-yield tool for objective questions on data analysis.

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Office suite architecture and file handling

Microsoft Office is an integrated productivity suite, not a single program. Word handles formatted text documents, Excel handles tabular calculation, PowerPoint handles slide-based presentation, and Access handles relational data storage for desktop database work. The recruitment-level point is to connect each application with its primary object: document, workbook, presentation and database. A document contains pages, sections and styles; a workbook contains worksheets, cells, formulas and charts; a presentation contains slides, layouts and masters; an Access database contains tables, relationships, queries, forms and reports.

Modern Office files usually use the Office Open XML family: .docx for Word documents, .xlsx for Excel workbooks and .pptx for PowerPoint presentations. These are zipped packages containing XML parts, media and relationship files. Macro-enabled variants add the letter m: .docm, .xlsm and .pptm. Older binary formats include .doc, .xls and .ppt. Objective questions often test the difference between a normal file and a template: Word templates use .dotx or .dotm, Excel templates use .xltx or .xltm, and PowerPoint templates use .potx or .potm.

Remember the application-object pair: Word document, Excel workbook, PowerPoint presentation and Access database.

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