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With the Microsoft Office System, you can quickly reference information online and on your computer without leaving your Office program. You can easily insert definitions, stock quotes, and other research information into your document, as well as customize settings to suit your research needs.

The new Research task pane is available from the Tools menu, Research command in Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Visio 2003, Office OneNote 2003, and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (in e-mail reading and composing views only).

From the Research task pane, you can search multiple sources or select a specific source. If your browser is Internet Explorer and you click a link, the Research task pane travels with you and is displayed on the left side of your screen as you view Web pages. To open the Research task pane in Internet Explorer, on the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Research.

The Parental Control feature lets you filter out potentially offensive content. You can use a password with Parental Control to prevent other users from changing your settings.

The following research services are also available from the Research task pane:

• Dictionary   Look up words or phrases in the Microsoft Encarta English dictionary easily while you work. No more referring to print or other online versions that take you from your workspace. The Encarta dictionary contains approximately 400,000 entries, and in addition to definitions, includes pronunciation keys, word histories, and word usage notes. You can also add other dictionaries, which are then compared against Encarta standards to ensure you receive the best results. Not all language-specific dictionaries, such as German, Korean, and Japanese, are provided by Encarta.

• Thesaurus   Look up synonyms while you work and insert them into your document directly from the Research task pane. You can also click a result to look up additional words, and you can look up words in the thesaurus of another language.

• Encyclopedia   Research your subject in Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, which contains more than 42,000 articles. Ask a question and review the results. In the list of results, you can view summaries and click related links that take you to additional information on MSN.

• Translation   Get translations quickly using bilingual dictionaries on your computer and online, or use machine translation on the Web. You can use the bilingual dictionaries to translate single words or short phrases. Machine translation services can translate phrases, paragraphs, or your entire document.

• Stock quotes and company information   Look up stock quotes and company information while you work. If you aren't sure of a stock symbol or company name, type a few words. Search will find the symbol or name. You can also insert company information into your document and perform custom actions.

  Note  Custom actions come from the smart tags (smart tags: Data recognized and labeled as a particular type. For example, a person's name or the name of a recent Microsoft Outlook e-mail message recipient is a type of data that can be recognized and labeled with a smart tag.) that reside on your computer. Not all languages support this feature.

  Comprehensive company information is provided by Gale, a company profile service provider. From the Research task pane, you can reference industry information, company fundamentals, contact information, and other company details.

• Third-party services   Add third-party premium content to your list of research services, and the Microsoft Office System will present the most relevant information to you based on your search scope and question. Examples of third-party services include Factiva (news), eLibrary (news and periodicals), Gale (company profiles), and WorldLingo (translation provider).
• Intranet sites   If your company has an intranet site, you can add it to the Research task pane for easy access. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 sites are supported. To add a SharePoint Portal Server site to the list of All Intranet Sites and Portals, in the Add Services dialog box, type http://your root directory/_vti_bin/search.asmx.

• Web search   Search the Web alongside your document by using MSN Search. To read more, click a link to view more information on the Web.