By Jerry Joyce and Marianne Moon, authors of Microsoft Office System Plain & Simple, 2003 Edition and eleven other books about Microsoft programs.

What can the Microsoft Office System programs do for you and what can you do with them? The programs offer many and varied uses for four general tasks: collecting, analyzing, organizing, and presenting information. Every Office program can help you organize information. Some Office programs do only a specific part of one of the other tasks. Some can do two or even three of those tasks. Because of this overlap in capabilities, it can be difficult to determine which program or programs to use to best accomplish your work. Here are the plain facts about each program's basic uses to help you make the right choice for the job at hand.

Microsoft Office Access

Access is a relational database program. Use it to collect and store information, analyze the information by querying the data, and organize the information by specifying which data you want and how you want it presented. You can also generate reports to share your information, although you may want to export the results into Word or Excel for the final presentation. Access is especially powerful for working with large amounts of information. In most cases, you enter, analyze, and organize information using forms and embedded programming. Access is straightforward if you use one of the available database templates or a database prepared by someone else. If you want to create a custom database, be prepared for some serious technical work.

Tip   If you have limited amounts of data that don't require extensive manipulation, consider using Excel instead of Access. Excel makes it easier to set up and review information. If you change your mind later, you can import data from Excel into Access and create a full relational database without re-entering the data.

Microsoft Office Excel

Excel is a straightforward number-crunching worksheet program. Use it to organize and analyze information, whether you're working on a simple list of numbers or executing complex calculations with built-in mathematical functions. You can also analyze and present your data visually by creating many different types of charts, which you can either view directly in Excel or copy into Word and PowerPoint.

Tip   To expand the simple number-crunching power of Excel, the PivotTable feature lets you use your worksheet as a simple database in which you can summarize your data based on the column and row categories.

Microsoft Office FrontPage

FrontPage is a program for creating Web pages or entire Web sites on the Internet or on a company intranet. It provides powerful tools to help you lay out your Web pages and create connections among them, without requiring knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. Text formatting features are just like those in Word. You can also collect information from Web-site visitors by creating forms for them to fill out and submit. You can store the resulting information in an Access database, where you can analyze and organize it.

Tip   For a simple Web page posted on an intranet site or shared folder, consider creating the page in a program such as Word or Excel and then saving it as a Web page. For Web pages posted on an external Internet site, use FrontPage to develop the most functional and consistent pages.

Microsoft Office InfoPath

InfoPath is a program you use to create, distribute, and complete XML-based forms. You don't need to know XML to use this program. InfoPath forms let you collect information electronically in a uniform manner and then reuse that information. Depending on the design of the form, when it's completed and returned, the information can be automatically organized in a database or other type of data-management system, document, or Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web site. In most cases, however, InfoPath is used in corporate networks, where forms are prepared by experts and sent out to the rest of us to complain about, complete, and return.

Tip   Use Word to create blank forms that are to be printed out and filled in by the recipient. You can create and complete electronic forms in Word, but InfoPath is easier to work with and provides many more features. To fill in InfoPath forms, users need to have the InfoPath program installed.

Microsoft Office OneNote

OneNote is a note-taking program. You can type notes on your computer or take handwritten notes on a Tablet PC. If you don’t want to type, you can record audio or video notes instead. You can also add pictures and drawings to your notes, apply stationery to format the look of a page and link to research on the Web. You can organize your notes by placing them in specific sections or folders, and you can access them quickly using keyword searches. You can also easily share meeting notes in e-mail or on a Web site.

Tip   You can use handwriting recognition in most Office programs, provided you installed this feature when you set up Office.

Microsoft Office Outlook

Outlook is a robust e-mail program... and much more. Use it to retrieve and read the e-mail messages you receive, and to share information in your own e-mail messages. Outlook can also organize your messages by grouping them in categories or placing them in specific folders. With the Outlook Calendar, you can schedule appointments and set up reminders for them. Use shared calendars to see when colleagues are free, create tasks for yourself or others, and organize contact information for your friends and associates.

Tip   Use Outlook with other Office programs to e-mail a document or send it out for review.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a program that provides many creative ways to present your information. You can use pictures, charts, diagrams, video clips, and sounds combined with text to create professional-looking slide shows. Although PowerPoint is used most often for presentations that are projected onto a large screen, you can pass your slide show along for viewing by other people on their computers, or you can run it from a Web page. You can even set your presentation to run automatically, changing from one slide to another at preset intervals, accompanied by your own narration.

Tip   To view a PowerPoint presentation that you have sent, the recipient needs either a copy of PowerPoint or a free viewer. If you distribute your presentation on a CD, you can automatically include the viewer. Otherwise, it can be downloaded from Microsoft Office Online.

Microsoft Office Project

Project is a suite of project-management programs that enable you to collect and organize all the information about a project, including deadlines, task dependencies, required resources, and personnel assignments. You can analyze different scenarios for completing your project, determine the effects of changes to the project, and monitor your costs. You can present the progress and state of the project in simple timelines and tables, or you can use other Office programs to create detailed reports and presentations. The Standard version of Project is designed for a single user; the Professional version allows collaboration. With Project Server, your powers of collaboration are greatly increased with the ability to track Project deadlines in your and other collaborators' Outlook calendars and interact with the entire program through a Web interface, making Project a simple but powerful tool for managers, analysts, and even executives.

Tip   You can quickly use your Project information in a different Office program by using a Project wizard to capture select information as a picture, and then apply the picture in presentations created in Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, or Word.

Microsoft Office Publisher

Publisher is a sophisticated but accessible layout program. Use it to present your information in printed documents, such as newsletters, folded greeting cards, menus, booklets, or brochures, or as a Web page. Publisher lets you place elements —pictures, stories, and so on —exactly where you want them. You can flow the text of a story into columns, around pictures or shapes, or onto different pages.

Tip   For a simple layout, such as a three-column newsletter, consider using Word instead of Publisher. If you need Publisher's powerful layout tools, create your text in Word, where it's easiest to compose and proofread, and then copy it into Publisher.

Microsoft Office Visio

Visio is a program for creating business and technical diagrams such as flow charts, timelines, organizational charts, network and software diagrams, and building plans. Use Visio to analyze business processes and project schedules, and to develop visual representations of your organization and its infrastructure. You can include the diagrams in other Office programs to integrate them with text and other graphics, or you can print them for your final presentation.

Tip   Use Visio when you want to create large or complex diagrams or diagrams that you need to update frequently. For simple diagrams, consider using the diagramming features that are built into other Office programs.

Microsoft Office Word

Word is a word-processing program — and a lot more. Use it to display information in lists, letters, resumes, legal documents, reports, or books. You can organize your content with simple tables, bulleted or numbered lists, special formatting of text, such as individual words, paragraphs, headings, colorful WordArt, and so on. Word also gives you the ability to place pictures and charts wherever you want them in a document.

Tip   If you don't need to do any calculations, use a Word table for easy formatting and rearranging when you're working on a list. If you need to make calculations based on the contents of the list, use Excel.

About the authors

Jerry and Marianne own a small consulting company, Moon Joyce Resources. They have worked with Microsoft for more than twenty years, writing, editing, and producing books, manuals, Help files, and other materials. They have authored twelve books published by Microsoft Press, including the award-winning Microsoft Windows XP Plain & Simple, Second Edition.