Microsoft Office XP

Microsoft Office XP is an office suite created and distributed by Microsoft for Windows operating system. Released to manufacturing (RTM) on March 5, 2001 and launched on May 31, 2001, it is the successor to Office 2000 and the predecessor to Office 2003, and was known as Office 10 in the early stages of its development cycle. Despite the "XP" branding, Office XP does not require Windows XP or higher; rather, "XP" was a marketing term for its era.

The Office Assistant, included in Microsoft Office 97 and subsequent versions until Office 2007, is disabled by default in Office XP; this was a key element of Microsoft's advertising campaign for Office XP, which claimed that Office XP was so user-friendly that the Office Assistant was rendered obsolete.

Office XP received three service packs during its lifetime. Mainstream support for Office XP ended on July 11, 2006 and extended support ended on July 12, 2011.

Naming conventions
Microsoft Office XP was released in conjunction with Windows XP, although the latter was not launched until October of the same year. Despite their naming similarities, Office XP is compatible not only with Windows XP, but also with Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 6a), Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows ME and Windows Vista. It is not compatible with Windows 95 as Office 2000 is the last supported version. Office XP is listed as incompatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8 on Windows Compatibility Center, but some users have claimed that it is compatible. It is the last version with support for Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows NT 4.0.

The individual components within Office XP have the "2002" suffix rather than the "XP" one, like: Word 2002, Excel 2002.

New features
Microsoft Office XP, released in 2001, is a major upgrade from versions 95, 97 and 2000, with various new features and improvements:
 * Safe Mode: This feature allows applications like Outlook to start when they might otherwise crash and disables most of the features that might lead the application to a crash. Safe Mode enables Office to detect and either repair or bypass the source of the problem, such as a corrupted registry or a misbehaving add-in.
 * Smart tag: One of the new technologies introduced in this version, smart tags operate based on user activity, such as helping with typing errors. These smart tags are supplied with the products, and are not programmable. For developers, though, there is the ability to create custom smart tags. In Office XP, custom smart tags could work only in Word and Excel.
 * Product Activation: Office XP incorporates product activation technology to prevent software piracy, and is also implemented in Windows XP and later versions of said products.
 * Speech and handwriting recognition are also features new to Office XP, shared among all Office applications as well as Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. The speech recognition feature encompasses two different functions, Dictation and Voice Command. Dictation provides users the ability to dictate words that will be transcribed into typed text in an Office program, (a feature also present in non-Microsoft products like Apple's iPad) while Voice Command is used to invoke menu options and commands via voice. Handwriting recognition allows users to enter text by writing instead of typing.
 * Text Services Framework support: Office XP, specifically, Word 2002 supports the Text Services Framework making it possible for services implemented using TSF to be used in Word. Office's speech recognition, handwriting recognition and tablet PC ink support and ink correction are such services.
 * Clipboard functionality has been greatly improved. The clipboard can now store up to 24 items and is located in the task pane. The Clipboard task pane also displays a thumbnail view of a copied item, whether it consists of text, numbers, a graphic or an image.
 * A major change to the Office XP application environment is the introduction of task panes. A task pane is a multi-purpose windowpane that appears on the right side of the window of an Office application. A task pane is basically used to house a number of features that were formerly controlled using dialog boxes, such as opening a new file or inserting clip art into an application document.
 * Office XP sports a streamlined, flatter look compared to previous versions of Microsoft Office. It was designed to be used in combination with Windows Whistler's Watercolor theme, which was abandoned in favor of Luna by the time it was released as Windows XP.

Removed features

 * In Excel 2002, several add-ins are no longer available. Some, but not all, are integrated into Excel 2002 and thus made redundant.
 * The .DBF files for Samples.xls and two Japanese templates are removed in Excel 2002.
 * Microsoft Query is no longer available.
 * In PowerPoint 2002, the Custom Soundtracks add-in is no longer supported and the Routing Recipient option on the Send To menu was removed.
 * Microsoft Binder. Instead, it was replaced by Microsoft Unbind, that can extract the documents in a Binder file.
 * Small Business Customer Manager
 * Microsoft Map was removed in Excel 2002.
 * A number of features were removed in Outlook 2002.

Editions
The component products were packaged together in various suites. Some of these editions were available as retail packages in either full or upgrade versions, others as full OEM versions for inclusion with new PCs, and still others as volume license versions that required no activation. All editions provided the core components of Word, Excel, and Outlook, and all editions except the Small Business edition provided PowerPoint.