Office 97

Microsoft Office 97 is a version of Microsoft Office, released in 1996 in a time range when also Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 have been made available. The internal version number is 8.0. This version introduced Microsoft Outlook (not to be confused with Outlook Express) into the suite and massively expanded upon the feature set of applications, adding support for the new Internet world. Office 97 was the last to be offered on floppy disks.

Two service releases have been released until 1998, with the last one receiving two minor updated until 1999. Mainstream hotfix support ended on 17 August 2001, with extended hotfix support ending on 28 February 2002 an assisted support ending on 16 January 2004.

System requirements
The computer needs to have either Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 SP5 or later installed. However, some features require at least Windows NT 4.0, making usage on NT 3.51 a little bit limited.

Service Releases
Microsoft released two Service Releases for Office 97, one in 1997 and the other in 1998. Service Releases are similar to Service Packs for Windows and were used until Office 2000, as Office XP switched to Service Packs.

Office Assistant
This is the first version of Office to include animated Office Assistant characters based on the guides from Microsoft Bob. These are optional and can be deselected during Setup. These assistants became very unpopular, especially in businesses. Thus, many of these stayed on Office 95. The assistants were not disabled by default until the release of Office XP, not removed from the typical installation until Office 2003 and not permanently removed until the release of Office 2007.