A billion people now rely on Microsoft Office to get things done. That didn’t happen overnight, so I took a quick look back (via Did You Know factoids).

  • The first edition of Microsoft Word was released 27 years ago.
  •  Clippy was first introduced in the Office 97 suite (and yanked after Office 2003).
  •  Microsoft Outlook 97 was codenamed "Ren & Stimpy." 
  • The first edition of Office—as an integrated suite—came out in 1989.
  • PowerPoint 1.0 was originally Presenter (by Forethought Inc.) in 1987 and built for Mac II.

As a GenX’er, I wonder how we tolerated our primitive applications back in the ‘80s. But hey, back then they were all we had. It was cool just to be able to use a GUI-based computer and capture ideas in a nifty Word processing app. But now we have video and photo editing in PowerPoint, co-authoring from the Web in OneNote, and a Ribbon that allows us to do most tasks in one click. Thank goodness the green screen and DOS days are behind us.

I thought a little trip down memory lane would be appropriate because last week’s launch of Office 2010 marked another milestone in delivering on our original vision:  To produce great tools to help people get things done. We take pride in the rich history of Microsoft Office, a history that millions of customers have helped us shape.  

So when you try Office 2010—and we hope you will—if you have some fond memories of your trusty word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet programs of the last few decades, we’d love to hear them. Maybe these milestones from Office history will spark a few:  

  • 1983: Word 1.0 for MS-DOS 
  • 1985: Word 1.0 for Mac & 2.0 for MS-DOS
  • 1987: Acquisition of ForeThought, Inc, the predecessor for PowerPoint 1.0 + Excel 1.0
  • 1988: PowerPoint 2.0 for Mac
  • 1989: First edition of Office is released (first integrated suite of applications)

—Kelby Johnson