The core applications,
Word,
Excel,
PowerPoint, and
Access, had only minor improvements from Office XP. Outlook 2003 received improved functionality in many areas, including better email and calendar sharing and information display, complete Unicode support, search folders, colored flags,
Kerberos authentication,
RPC over
HTTP, and
Cached Exchange mode. Another key benefit of Outlook 2003 was the improved
junk mail filter.
Tablet and pen support was introduced in the productivity applications. Word 2003 introduced a
reading layout view, document comparison, better change-tracking and annotation/reviewing, a Research Task Pane, voice comments and an
XML-based format among other features. Excel 2003 introduced list commands, some statistical functions and XML data import, analysis and transformation/document customization features. Access 2003 introduced a backup command, the ability to view object dependencies, error checking in forms and reports among other features. Office 2003 features improvements to
smart tags such as smart tag Lists, which are defined in XML, by using regular expressions and an extended type library. Smart tag recognition was added to PowerPoint and Access.
FrontPage 2003 introduced conditional formatting,
Find and Replace for HTML elements, new tools for creating and formatting tables and cells, dynamic templates (
Dreamweaver),
Flash support,
WebDAV and
SharePoint publishing among other features. Publisher 2003 introduced a Generic Color PostScript printer driver for commercial printing.
Information Rights Management capabilities were introduced in document productivity applications to limit access to a set of users and/or restrict types of actions that users could perform. Support for
managed code add-ins as
VSTO solutions was introduced. Office 2003 was the last version of
Microsoft Office to include fully customizable
toolbars and menus for all of its applications, the
Office Assistant, the ability to
slipstream service packs into the original setup files,
Office Web Components, and the
Save My Settings Wizard, which allowed users to choose whether to keep a locally cached copy of installation source files and several utility
resource kit tools. A new picture organizer with basic editing features, called
Microsoft Office Picture Manager, was included. Only basic clipart and templates were included on the disc media, with most content hosted online and downloadable from within the Office application. Microsoft advertised
Office Online as a major Office 2003 feature "outside the box". Office Online provides how-to articles, tips, training courses, templates, clip art, stock photos and media and downloads (including Microsoft and third-party extensibility add-ins for Microsoft Office programs). Office 2003 features broad
XML integration (designing customized
XML schemas, importing and transforming XML data) throughout resulting in a far more data-centric model (instead of a document-based one). The
MSXML 5 library was introduced specifically for Office's XML integration. Office 2003 also has
SharePoint integration to facilitate data exchange, collaborated workflow, and publishing. InfoPath 2003 was introduced for collecting data in XML-based forms and templates based on information from databases. ==Removed features==