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Office on Macintosh History

Anonymous
2016-07-20T19:28:44+00:00

Split from this thread.

BTW, the first version of Office for Mac was marketed during Super Bowl 1985 and was on the market the following March, so it is considerably older than the date you have in your signature. "Macintosh Office" is Microsoft Office for Mac.

Sorry, but "Macintosh Office" had nothing to do with Microsoft Office.  Rather, as explained by Wikipedia:

The Macintosh Office was an Apple Inc. effort to design an office-wide computing environment consisting of Macintosh computers, a local area networking system, a file server, and a networked laser printer. 

It wasn't an app (or suite of apps) at all.  I was working for an Apple dealer at the time, and I remember it well.

Microsoft has a series of web pages devoted to their corporate history, like this page: The History of Microsoft - 1989

Go to that page and scroll down a bit, you'll see this:

June 19, 1989Office for the Macintosh is available. Macintosh applications include: Word 4.00, Excel 2.20, PowerPoint 2.01, and Mail 1.37. The four applications provide the tools to perform essential business tasks of most business professionals.  *this is first version of Office*

(Bold emphasis mine.)

As documented by One More Thing…, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Office were all Mac apps long before they were Windows apps.  The actual release dates for each app on each platform is given.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-21T15:23:07+00:00

    You are correct about Word. Shortly after it was sold as stand-alone it was sold in a bundle - Microsoft Office.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-20T19:23:06+00:00

    The first version of Office for Windows was 1989. Microsoft is attempting to write their Macintosh version from the historical record. There was briefly a version for DOS.

    I forgot to address this in my previous post, but is it possible you're confusing Office with Word?  Microsoft Word was a DOS app before the Mac and Windows versions.  Here's a list of every first platform release of Word:

    October of 1983:

    Microsoft Word 1.0 released for Xenix and MS-DOS

    January of 1985:

    Microsoft Word 1.0 released for Macintosh

    19 88 (month unknown):

    Microsoft Write for the Atari-ST

    • Note 1: Despite the different name, Microsoft Write for Atari was actually a port of Microsoft Word 1.05 for Macintosh.
    • Note 2: Most sources list 1988 as the release date, and the earliest reference I could find was this review dated Summer, 1988. But I also found a screenshot for version 1.0 that shows August 28, 1987.)

    1989 (month unknown):

    Word 5.0 for MS-DOS & OS/2 and SCO UNIX

    January 1990:

    Word for Windows 1.0 for Windows

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  3. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-20T16:19:30+00:00

    The first version of Office for Windows was 1989. Microsoft is attempting to write their Macintosh version from the historical record. There was briefly a version for DOS.

    The first version of Microsoft Office (there was no Windows and it was simply called Microsoft Office) was 1985. It was Mac only. (Word, Excel and PowerPoint). Here's a screen shot from Microsoft Word

    https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsiervos.com%2Fimages%2FWordMac1985.jpg&f=1

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-20T17:38:49+00:00

    Can you Office history nerds please knock it off? 

    Please consider that every time you reply, everyone who has subscribed to this issue receives your comment as an email update. Stop spamming us all with your off-topic Office history debate. It's rude and inappropriate for this thread. Hopefully a moderator can remove these posts.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-07-20T17:31:14+00:00

    The first version of Office for Windows was 1989.

    Not true. The first version of Office for Windows was released October 1, 1990. See here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/History/The-History-of-Microsoft-1990

    The first version of Microsoft Office (there was no Windows and it was simply called Microsoft Office) was 1985. It was Mac only. (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

    Not true , and not even possible, since Word was the only one of those apps even available for the Mac in early 1985.  It was released Jan 18, 1985.  See here: http://www.yourmacexpert.com/blog/2015/06/09/of-course-microsoft-office-is-available-for-the-mac/

    Excel for Mac was released September 30, 1985 (ibid).  PowerPoint for Mac wasn't released until April 20, 1987.

    I'm old enough to remember when these apps came out.  I'm old enough to remember that Excel was Microsoft's second Mac spreadsheet, after Multiplan (released in September of 1984).

    But I don't have to rely on my memory. These facts are well documented.  If it really matters to you, I can cite a source for each of my claims.

    I strongly recommend looking at this article: Which came first, Office for Mac, or Office for Windows? The answer may surprise you!

    It has a chart showing the actual release dates for all the Office apps on both platforms.

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