User interface Office XP has a streamlined, flatter appearance compared to previous versions of Office. According to Microsoft, this change involved "removing visually competing elements, visually prioritizing items on a page, increasing letter spacing and word spacing for better readability, and defining foreground and background color to bring the most important elements to the front."
Smart tags Excel 2002 and Word 2002 introduce
smart tags, commands for specific types of text including
addresses,
calendar dates,
personal names,
telephone numbers,
ticker symbols, or
tracking numbers in documents. A smart tag is denoted by a dotted purple underline underneath actionable text in a document; hovering over this text with the mouse cursor displays an icon that presents a list of related commands when invoked with a mouse click or the ++
keyboard shortcut. A ticker symbol smart tag in Excel can present the latest stock information in a cell within a workbook, for example, while a contact name smart tag in a Word document can display options to send an e-mail message to—or schedule a meeting with—that contact. Excel and Word support extensible smart tags that allow developers and organizations to display custom commands related to specific information. The smart tags used by Word are also available in Outlook 2002 if the former is configured as the default e-mail editor. Examples of third-party companies that produced smart tags after the release of Office XP include
ESPN,
Expedia,
FedEx, and
MSNBC. Microsoft released a Euro Currency Converter smart tag when new
euro coins and notes were introduced.
Task panes Office XP introduces a task pane interface that consolidates popular menu bar commands on the right side of the screen to facilitate quick access to them. Office XP includes Startup, Search, Clipboard, and Insert Clip Art task panes, as well as task panes that are exclusive to certain programs. Word 2002, for example, includes a task pane dedicated to style and formatting options. Users can switch between open task panes through the use of back and forward buttons; a
drop-down list also presents specific task panes to which users can switch. The Insert Clip Art task pane is available in Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word and provides options to search for and insert online
clip art into files. The Office Clipboard has been redesigned as the Clipboard task pane across all Office XP programs and can accommodate up to 24 clipboard items compared to 12 in Office 2000. Clipboard items provide a visual representation to help users distinguish different types of content. The Office Clipboard task pane opens when at least two items are copied. The compatibility pack requires Windows 2000 SP4,
Windows Server 2003, Windows XP SP1, or later versions of Windows. The update also enables compatibility with documents created in
Office 2010,
Office 2013, and
Office 2016.
Alternative user input Handwriting recognition Office XP introduces handwriting recognition in all Office programs, allowing users to write with a mouse or
stylus instead of entering text by typing on a keyboard. Users can insert handwritten notes into Excel, add handwritten comments to PowerPoint presentations, send handwritten e-mail messages with Outlook, or write directly into Word documents. Notes written with a
handheld PC or a
Pocket PC can be converted into Word documents, and handwritten content in Word documents can be converted to text. The downloadable Tablet Pack for Office XP provided an extension for
Windows Journal to reuse notes as Outlook 2002 items and to import meeting information from Outlook 2002 into notes.
Speech recognition Speech recognition based on
Microsoft Research technology is available for all Office XP programs, allowing users to dictate text into active documents, to change document formatting, and to navigate the interface by voice. The speech recognition feature encompasses two different modes: Dictation, which transcribes spoken words into text; and Voice Command, which invokes interface features. Speech recognition can be installed during Office XP setup or by clicking the Speech option in the Tools menu in Word 2002. When installed, it is available as a Microphone command on the Language toolbar that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen (lower-right corner in East-Asian versions of Office XP). When launched for the first time, speech recognition offers a tutorial to improve recognition accuracy, which begins by providing instructions to adjust the microphone for optimal performance. Speech recognition uses a speech profile to store information about a user's voice. Users can configure speech recognition settings, including pronunciation sensitivity in voice command mode, accuracy and recognition response time in dictation mode, and microphone settings through the Speech
control panel applet. The Regional and Language Options applet provides Language toolbar and additional settings.
Reliability With Office XP, Microsoft incorporated several features to address reliability issues observed in previous versions of Office: •
Application Recovery: Users can safely restart or terminate unresponsive Office programs—and save open documents before termination—from a utility that is accessible from the Office Tools group on the Windows
Start menu. The Save My Settings Wizard, introduced in Office 2000 as an optional download for Microsoft account users to remotely store their Office settings to the Office Update web site, has been updated to support importing and exporting backups to local storage or to a
network share. In an effort to curtail
software piracy, Microsoft incorporated
product activation technology into all versions of Office XP to prohibit users from installing a single copy of the software in a manner that violates the
end-user license agreement (EULA). The EULA allows a single user to install one copy each on a primary device and a portable device such as a laptop. Users who make substantial hardware changes to an Office XP device may need to reactivate the software through the
Internet or by
telephone. Product activation does not require
personally identifiable information. Office XP introduced an optional
subscription-based activation model that allowed consumers to annually license the product and receive incremental updates at a reduced price when compared with the cost of a full retail version. Microsoft originally intended to deliver the activation model to United States customers after the retail availability of Office XP on May 31, 2001, but later decided to make it available to consumers in "a few select locations" instead, citing a more cautious delivery approach. In spite of this, Microsoft distributed optical media and a single subscription to authorized U.S. retail partners who attended
teamMicrosoft Live! events. As part of a
pilot experiment, consumers in Australia, France, and New Zealand could purchase a subscription for Office XP starting in May 2001; the worldwide release of the activation model was contingent on the success of the pilot experiment, but Microsoft terminated support for subscriptions in 2002 based on feedback and research that demonstrated it was not well understood by consumers.
Office 365—released over a decade after Office XP—has since reintroduced subscription-based licenses to consumers.
User assistance A new "Ask a Question" feature appears in the top-right corner of all Office XP programs and allows users to type
natural language questions and receive answers without opening the Office Assistant ("Clippy") or Office Help. Additionally, Office Help has been updated to aggregate and display content from the Internet in response to a query. The Office Assistant is now disabled by default and only appears when Help is activated. ==New application-specific features==