However, IT managers and users alike will need extensive training and plenty of time to assimilate all its features. IT managers need to be wary of plunking Office 2000 willy-nilly into their corporate infrastructure. Upgrading to Office 2000 demands extensive commitment to other Microsoft technologies to fully exploit its features, and some features won't work without the still-unavailable Windows 2000. Microsoft's Premium Edition, which like the other editions has started shipping to big customers but won't be on retail shelves until June, includes Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, PhotoDraw 2000, FrontPage 2000 and Small Business Tools. Easier deployment One of several features that will ease deployment of Office 2000 is the new Custom Installation wizard, which is easy to use and well designed.
Managers can create profiles that contain just the applications and features each user needs.
We easily created a profile that included Word and Excel but not Access and PowerPoint, and we could even leave out some tool bars and features like PivotTables. Features such as Install on Demand, which installs certain features only when users need them, and self-repairing applications, which automatically check for missing or corrupted files and repair them as needed, will go a long way toward helping IT departments manage and support Office 2000 after deployment. Corel's recent introduction of its WordPerfect 2000 application suite this month leads the way toward Web-enabling the general business user with its inclusion of NetPerfect and Trellix Web publishing technologies throughout its suite. Office 2000 follows suit, going far beyond Office 97's Web capabilities. By making HTML a principal format, Office 2000 applications let users mix and match HTML file formats with Microsoft's proprietary file formats, thus blurring the line between documents created for the Web and those intended solely for printing.