Microsoft Creative Writer (1994) 12 Word Processor Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Creative Writer is a dumbed down Microsoft BOB-like word processor and sign maker targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a drawing program called Microsoft Fine Artist

• 1.x
• 2.x

Microsoft Fine Artist (1994) 11 Graphics Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Fine Artist is a dumbed down Microsoft Bob-like drawing program targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a word processor called Microsoft Creative Writer.

• 1.x

Microsoft GIF Animator (1997) 3 Graphics Windows

Back before HTML 5, Flash, or fancy scripting, the only way you could be sure that you would annoy your readers was to use animated GIFs. Not wanting to disappoint, Microsoft made their own GIF creation program: GIF Construction Set. In the late 90's sprit of crushing competition, Microsoft gave it away for free. It was also bundled with Microsoft Image Composer and Microsoft FrontPage. Construction Set. Although in practice GIF Construction set worked better for building the animated GIFs, and then GIF Animator was useful for touching things up afterwards. (Mainly removing the shareware GIF Construction Set's "created by" comment text. :P )

• 1.0

Microsoft Office (1991) 415 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 95
• 97/98
• 2000

Microsoft Word (1983) 205 Word Processor Windows DOS MacOS

The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.

• 1.x (Windows)
• 6.x
• 95
• 97

Microsoft Works (1986) 113 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Works was an all-in-one scaled-down Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Database geared towards the home user. It was released in variants for early DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. Microsoft Works competed against Lotus Jazz, FrameWork, AlphaWorks/LotusWorks, PFS First Choice, and many others.

• 2.x (Win)
• 3.x (Win)
• 4.0
• 4.5
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 9.0

PageView (1988) 3 Word Processor Windows

Pageview is a tool to graphically display, manipulate, and print Microsoft Word 3.0 and 4.0 for DOS documents. This was released almost two years prior to Word 1.0 for Windows.

• 1.0

Picture It! (1996) 6 Graphics Windows

Picture It!, from Microsoft, is a photo image adjustment tool for novice users. It includes a number of standard touch-up functions such as red-eye adjustment, resizing, brightness, contrast, and cropping. It can make direct use of scanners and digital cameras. All functions are presented as a dumbed down step-by step series of tabs and menus. Picture-It competed against Adobe Photodeluxe.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 99

Visio (1992) 25 Graphics Windows

Visio is a flow-chart diagramming program for Microsoft Windows originally from Shapeware/Visio Corp. Visio was specifically designed as a flow charting tool rather than a generic drawing tool. It featured easy to use drag-and-drop diagram creation, and shipped with a wide variety of stencils. In 2000 Visio Corp was acquired by Microsoft. It competed with Aldus Intellidraw and Micrografx Snapgraphics and Meta Software's MetaDesign.

• 2.0