Understanding the Word Name Game

Relative newcomers to the wonderful world of Word can easily become confused when discussing Word versions. In order to clarify any misunderstanding, the following information is offered. (Word history mavens are welcome to contribute any additional information desired concerning the actual version history.)

• Word 2 was available on the market in the early 1990s. It was used and abused by millions. I still have several books on my bookshelves that relate to this version of Word. (OK, I admit it--I'm rather slow in clearing out my bookshelves.)
• Word 6 was released in 1993. There were actually four different versions of Word 6 that you may hear reference to: Word 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c, and Word NT, version 6.0. The version for Windows NT was actually released in 1994.
• Word 95 was released in 1995. This is often referred to as Word 7. (Word 95 and Word 7 are one and the same.)
• Word 97 was released in November 1996. This version is also known as Word 8.
• Word 2000 was released in June 1999. This version is sometimes referred to as Word 9.
• Word 2002 was released in August 2001. This version is sometimes referred to as Word 10. (Sometimes the version is incorrectly referred to as Word XP. There is no Word XP, but Word 2002 is included in the Office XP suite. Go figure.)
• Word 2003 was released in October 2003. This version is sometimes referred to as Word 11.
• Word 2007 was released in January 2007. This version (can you guess?) is sometimes referred to as Word 12.

There were numerous differences between each of these versions, and some versions had multiple service packs released for them, which meant there were even more differences. There are also versions of Word released for other platforms, such as the Mac, and they go by even different names. Among the versions noted above, the biggest differences from one version to another were with the introduction of Word 97 and Word 2007. Word 97 changed many interface features, the file formats used by Word, and the programming language used for macros. Word 2007 introduced an even more radical change in the user interface along with another new file format, but no drastic changes in the programming language for macros.

Unless you know quite a bit about Word history, you may not understand why there was a jump from Word 2 to Word 6. This was because while pre-Word 6 versions of Word were on the market, there were also versions of Word for DOS on the market. Word 5 (for DOS) was the last major version of the product for the DOS world. To show some supposed continuity in the family, Redmond adopted the DOS version numbering for their next major Word product, resulting in Word 6.

Now that you know the family genealogy, you should also know that WordTips doesn't cover all of these versions of Word. My experience has been that very few people use a version of Word older than Word 97, so WordTips covers only the five latest versions of the program.