It is well-know fact that Microsoft Word is one of the most widely used and popular word processors. But do you know that the Word had a humble beginning? As Word celebrates its silver jubilee year, let's take a trip down memory lane to see how Microsoft Word evolved to what it is today.
1983
It was February 1, 1983, when development work began on the first word processor at Microsoft under the name Multi-tool Word. It was later renamed as Microsoft Word and released on October 25, 1983 for the IBM PC, which came bundled with MS-DOS operating system.
Obviously, this was based on the MS-DOS character system and was the first word processor for IBM PC to show not only typeface markups such as bold and italics on the screen, but also actual line breaks. This was not a true WYSIWYG system, as the displays with a resolution to show the actual typefaces did not exist with IBM PCs at the time.
It will be interesting to note that this version of Word did not have a spell-checker built in; rather you had to use a separate Spell application, also from Microsoft, to achieve the goal. It was first demonstrated to computer users by distributing its demo versions with the November 1983 issue of PC World. In fact, it was the first program to be distributed on a disk with a magazine and a trend-setter in that sense.
1985 - 1987
Word was released for Macintosh in 1985 and it was a port from the earlier DOS version, but with a few cosmetic changes to be used on the Mac screen which had a better resolution. It still did not really have a proper GUI, but used WYSIWYG features. It became popular and Microsoft released Word 3.0 for Macintosh in 1987 (there was no Word 2.0) with various enhancements including the first attempt at making a cross-platform compatible format (RTF or Rich Text Format specifications were followed in this case).
Since Word 3.0 was buggy and unstable, Microsoft quickly released Word 3.01 and mailed free copies of the same to all registered users of Word 3.0.
1989
The GUI-based Microsoft Windows was already out and Microsoft released the GUI-based version of Word - Word for Windows 1.0 in 1989. Interestingly, the first GUI-based version of word was not this, but Word 3.0 for Macintosh.
1992
Microsoft had its office suite ready in 1992 and Word 2.0 was released as part of Microsoft Office 3.0. Word had become a major word processor in the market by then, but this was mainly due to the failure of the previously popular DOS-based word processor - WordPerfect to produce Windows-based versions of the same. Many of the features present in Word today, were already present in this version of Word.
1994
Along with the release of Microsoft Office 4.0 in 1994, Word 6.0 was released. It was named 6.0 rather than 3.0, as would have been logical, so that it should not be confused with Word 3.0 for Macintosh, which was released seven years ago. Another reason perhaps could be that Microsoft may have thought "Word 3.0" was jinxed. It was a buggy version of the word processor for Macintosh and had proved to be very expensive as they had to ship an updated version Word 3.01 for Macintosh for free to registered users.
1995
It had become a habit to release Word as part of the Office suite, rather than as a single product. So Word 95 was released with Office 95, which was released in 1995 for Windows 95. This was the first version of Word featuring not only the word processing application, but also tools for drawing, multilingual support, real-time spell check, etc.
1996
Just a year after Office 95 was released, Office 97 was released and it had Word 97 as part of the suite. While it was similar to the previous version in every way, it included for the first time a feature known as Office Assistant, which was "supposed to" assist the user in common tasks. In reality, it was nothing more than an irritant and was quickly slammed by users.
1999
It took three more years to release Word 2000, which was included in Office 2000. In this version, Office Genuine Advantage was introduced, which used an internet connection to download updates for legal copies of the software. Another important new feature was the clipboard, which allowed multiple objects to be held simultaneously.
2001
Office XP (named as such to coincide with the newly released Windows XP) was released in 2001 and along with it came Word 2002. While the Office Assistant was still present, it was (thankfully) switched off by default in this version of Word.
2003
The year 2003 saw the release of Office 2003, and the version of Word that came with it was named as Microsoft Office Word rather than Word 2003. This version of Word had the same set of features as the previous one, but had a cosmetic overhaul with the looks matching that of the Windows XP design.
2007
Word 2007 was released in 2007 along with Office 2007. This version of Word differed radically in looks from the previous versions, and went more with a Vista kind of theme. A major and easily noticeable feature was the Ribbon user interface design which was a bit confusing (at least at the start) to users of the previous versions since it was result-oriented rather than the traditionally command-oriented Menu system. Also new in this version is the new XML-based DOCX format, which is not compatible with previous versions. This version of Microsoft Word was made available as part of the downloadable trial version of Office 2007 prior to its release.
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