Microsoft Office shared tools
Microsoft Office shared tools are software components that are included in all Microsoft Office products.
Delve
Office Delve allows Microsoft 365 users to search and manage their emails, meetings, contacts, social networks and documents stored on OneDrive or Sites in Microsoft 365. Delve uses machine learning and artificial intelligence. In April 2015 Microsoft launched a mobile version of Office Delve in the App Store and Google Play for users with a Microsoft 365 subscription. In 2017, Microsoft dropped the Delve app from the Microsoft Store.Graph
Microsoft Graph is an OLE application deployed by Microsoft Office programs such as Excel and Access to create charts and graphs. The program is available as an OLE application object in Visual Basic. Microsoft Graph supports many different types of charts, but its output is dated. Office 2003 was the last version to use Microsoft Graph for hosting charts inside Office applications as OLE objects. Office 2007 – specifically, Excel 2007 – includes a new integrated charting engine, and the charts are native to the applications. The new engine supports advanced formatting, including 3D rendering, transparencies, and shadows. Chart layouts can also be customized to highlight various trends in the data. Microsoft Graph still exists for compatibility reasons, but the entry points are removed. This product can be used within other products, and is available in the Object menu in the Insert tab in Office Programs. Sold separately in Mac releases.The first software sold under the name Microsoft Chart was an attempt by Microsoft to compete with the successful Lotus 1-2-3 by adding a companion to Microsoft Multiplan, the company's spreadsheet in the early 1980s. Microsoft Chart shared its box design and two-line menu with Multiplan, and could import Multiplan data. The simple graphs were drawn on the screen in graphics mode, and could not be printed on some dot matrix devices. The main drawback of Microsoft's solution at the time was the need to exit Multiplan and then load Chart to compose and draw a graph, because MS-DOS was not a multitasking operating system. In the early 1990s, Microsoft Chart was renamed Microsoft Graph.
Query
Visual Basic for Applications
WordArt
WordArt is a text-styling utility, created by Scott Forstall and Nat Brown while interning for Microsoft in 1991. It allows users to create stylized text with various "special effects" such as textures, outlines, and many other manipulations that are not available through the standard font formatting. For example, one can create shadows, rotate, "bend", and "stretch" the shape of the text. WordArt is available in 30 different preset styles in Microsoft Word, however, it is customizable using the tools available on the WordArt toolbar and Drawing toolbar up to Office 2003, or on the WordArt tools tab since Office 2007. It is also available in Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Publisher. In Office 2010 and beyond, users can apply formatting effects such as shadow, bevel, glow, gradient glow, and reflection to their text.In Office 2007, WordArt was given a complete overhaul in Excel and PowerPoint, with new styles, new effects, and the ability to apply WordArt to regular text boxes, and in Word, to body text. The new styles were included in Word 2010, but the presets revamped in Word 2013.
SmartArt
SmartArt, found under the Insert tab in the ribbon in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook, is a new group of editable and formatted diagrams. There are 115 preset SmartArt graphics layout templates in categories such as list, process, cycle, and hierarchy. When an instance of a SmartArt is inserted, a Text Pane appears next to it to guide the user through entering text in the hierarchical levels. Each SmartArt graphic, based on its design, maps the text outline, automatically resized for best fit, onto the graphic. There are a number of "quick styles" for each graphic that apply largely different 3D effects to the graphic, and the graphic's shapes and text can be formatted through shape styles and WordArt styles. In addition, SmartArt graphics change their colors, fonts, and effects to match the document's theme. It was included in Office since 2006 to now.Discontinued
Binder
Microsoft Binder was an application originally included with Microsoft Office 95, 97, and 2000 that allowed users to include different types of OLE 2.0 objects in one file. Originally a test host for OLE 2.0, it was not widely used, and was discontinued after Office 2000.The filename extension for Microsoft Binder files was
.OBD; the Office Binder template format was .OBT. A Microsoft Office Binder Wizard used the extension .OBZ.Binder was no longer shipped with Office versions starting from XP. Office XP and Office 2003 comes with an optional Unbind utility that, upon execution, extracts the contents of the Binder document to a directory of the user’s choosing. This utility may be installed either through the Add or Remove Features functionality of Microsoft Office’s installation wizard or online from Microsoft Download Center.
Small Business Tools
Small Business Customer Manager was an Access-based tool which combined accounting data from most popular accounting software and Outlook contacts and allowed user to track customer profiles and maximize revenue. It integrated seamlessly with Word and Publisher.Small Business Financial Manager was an Excel-based tool which allowed users to analyze data and create reports and charts based on a created from user's accounting data from popular accounting packages. It was first released in 1996 and bundled with Small Business editions of Office 97 or with every Office 2000 suite except Standard. Originally it was created for Microsoft by Timeline Inc. and originally was called Accounting Analysis Pack. It was available in United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
List of SBFM versions:
- Small Business Financial Manager for Excel for Windows 95
- Small Business Financial Manager 97
- Small Business Financial Manager 98 '' ; added business comparison, projection reports, charts
- Small Business Financial Manager 2000
Business Planner contained business-planning resources, templates, articles, advice from experts. It allowed user to create a business plan and a marketing plan. It was available for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and France.
Data Analyzer
Microsoft Data Analyzer 2002 was part of Microsoft Office XP. Microsoft originally purchased the software as part of the intellectual property of Maximal Innovative Intelligence - Maximal's "Max" product was rebranded as Microsoft Data Analyzer. Even though it was a stand-alone application and was not available in any Office XP bundle, it was a part of the Office XP suite. It was not updated beyond version 3.5.Microsoft Data Analyzer allows analyzing and visualizing data and data trends, and is integrated with SQL Server Analysis Services. Reports and graphs generated could be saved as HTML, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint files.
Document Scanning and Document Imaging
Microsoft Office Document Scanning is a scanning and optical character recognition application introduced first in Office XP. The OCR engine is based upon Nuance's OmniPage. MODS is suited for creating archival copies of documents. It can embed OCR data into both MDI and TIFF files. This enables text search on the files, which is integrated into the Windows Search.Microsoft Office Document Imaging enables editing and annotating documents scanned by Microsoft Office Document Scanning. It was first introduced in Office XP, and was included in Office 2003 and Office 2007. Although it is not available in Office 2010, it is possible to install it from a previous version of Microsoft Office and use it with Office 2010. Microsoft offers MDI to TIFF File Converter, a command line tool, which allows users to convert one or more MDI files to TIFF.
MODI supports Tagged Image File Format as well as its own proprietary format called MDI. It can save text generated from the OCR process into the original TIFF file. However, MODI produces TIFF files that violate the TIFF standard specifications and are only usable by itself.
In its default mode, the OCR engine will de-skew and re-orient the page where required.
Since Office 2003 Service Pack 3, MODI no longer takes over the file association with Tagged Image File Format files as part of the Service Pack's security changes. Also, it no longer supports JPEG compression in TIFF files.
MODS and MODI are no longer available since Office 2010, although Microsoft recommends a workaround by installing the MODI component from SharePoint Designer 2007 or old Office media.
Programmability
MODI exposes adocument and an image object through Component Object Model. It can convert scanned images to text under program control, using its built-in OCR engine.The MODI object model is accessible from development tools that support the Component Object Model by using a reference to the Microsoft Office Document Imaging 11.0 Type Library. The MODI Viewer control is accessible from any development tool that supports ActiveX controls by adding Microsoft Office Document Imaging Viewer Control 11.0 or 12.0 to the application project. These folders are usually located in
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI.The MODI control became accessible in the Office 2003 release; while the associated programs were included in earlier Office XP, the object model was not exposed to programmatic control.
A simple example in Visual Basic.NET follows:
Dim inputFile As String = "C:\test\multipage.tiff"
Dim strRecText As String = ""
Dim Doc1 As MODI.Document
Doc1 = New MODI.Document
Doc1.Create
Doc1.OCR ' this will OCR all pages of a multi-page TIFF file
Doc1.Save ' this will save the deskewed reoriented images, and the OCR text, back to the inputFile
For imageCounter As Integer = 0 To ' work your way through each page of results
strRecText &= Doc1.Images.Layout.Text ' this puts the OCR results into a string
Next
File.AppendAllText ' write the OCR file out to disk
Doc1.Close ' clean up
Doc1 = Nothing