Word is one of the core programs for Office, and unsurprisingly regularly receives a large amount of attention. The number of smart tags and task panes vary from program to program; and Word has the most. The whole idea of smart tags is to provide context-sensitive commands available extremely easily. For example, when you paste text from another source, a smart tag appears giving you the option to preserve formatting, remove it, or match the current document. When Word has just auto-corrected a document, a smart tag is present allowing you to undo that auto-correct, or disable that auto-correct rule altogether. And to give yet another example, when you type a name, Word gives you the option to look up the contact in your Outlook Contacts list, make an appointment, insert their address etc. All of these make it even easier to get the job done in the least possible time.

An AutoCorrect smart tag

Task panes were implemented to some extent in Publisher 2000. These are now present throughout Office, and provide easy access to common tasks. In Word, there are 8 of these :- New Document, Clipboard, Search, Insert Clip-Art, Styles and Formatting, Reveal Formatting, Mail Merge and Translate. This new translate feature allows you to easily look up a word in a dictionary, and find its equivalent in Spanish, French etc. However, it is fairly limited at this stage, and only seems capable of one word rather than phrases - instead, it links to an online translation service.

A previous problem with word has been exposing the formatting that has been applied to certain text, and changing this formatting. Fortunately, in this release the process has been simplified extensively. A number of new options are available:- 'Select Text with Similar Formatting' allows you to quickly select all occurrences of specific formatting... not just in the surrounding area, but across the whole document instantly.

Other features worth mentioning include the 'Send for Review' option, which sends a document via email (or over a network) for review. The recipient can then make notes and changes on the document, and return the document. Once returned, the reviewer's comments are automatically merged into the document. The appearance of these notes and changes has been considerably improved, with changes recorded as a note outside of the main body of the text, allowing the page layout to be preserved.

Word has continued to grow and develop, and usability has been increased significantly with the introduction task panes and smart tags.