Developer(s) Microsoft Development status Discontinued | Last release 7.0b Platform IA-32 | |
Initial release 24 August 1995; 21 years ago (1995-08-24) Operating system | ||
Microsoft Office 95, also known as Microsoft Office for Windows 95, released on 24 August 1995, was a version of Microsoft Office designed specifically for Windows 95, succeeding Office 4.3. Office 95 was replaced by Office 97 on 19 November 1996.
Contents
Features
Microsoft Office 95 includes six applications: Word (a word processor), Excel (a spreadsheet), PowerPoint (a presentation program), Access (a database management system), Schedule+ (a time management app) and Binder (a program for binding the work of the mentioned apps together). The CD-ROM version also includes Microsoft Bookshelf.
True to its namesake, this suite is designed specifically for Windows 95. Previously, Microsoft had released Office 4.2 for Windows NT for several architectures, which included 32‑bit Word 6.0 for Windows NT and Excel 5.0 for Windows NT, but PowerPoint 4.0 was 16‑bit. With Office for Windows 95, all components in the suite were 32-bit. All the Office 95 apps are OLE 2-enabled, meaning that they allow interoperability between themselves, as well as all other applications that support this data interchange protocol. Binder used this protocol to bind OLE objects together.
Office for Windows 95 bears version number 7.0 to match Word's version number. Other components also bear the same version numbers to show that they are contemporaries, although their predecessors were not version 6.0. The previous versions of components were Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0, Schedule+ 1.0 and Access 2.0. Binder was a new app at the time with no predecessor. Microsoft Outlook was not included and used to be bundled with Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5.
Microsoft Excel contained an easter egg, a hidden Doom–like game called Hall of Tortured Souls crediting the application's writers.
Contemporary components
Several additional programs were "compatible with Microsoft Office 95":
Other contemporary Microsoft products were:
Editions
Office 95 was available in two versions. They contained the following applications:
Updates
There were no downloadable service packs or service releases for Office for Windows 95. Instead, two updated versions, 7.0a and 7.0b were released to fix bugs in the application. The updates could be ordered from Microsoft Support. A downloadable update was released in 1999 to address minor year 2000 problems. All support for Microsoft Office 95 ended on December 31, 2001, the same day as Windows 95.
Versions of Microsoft Jet database engine, 3.0 and 3.5 used by Access for Windows 95 (Access 7.0) and the later released, Access 97 respectively, had a critical issue which made these versions of Access unusable on a computer with more than 1 GB of memory. While this problem was fixed for Jet 3.5/Access 97, it was never fixed for Jet 3.0 or Access 95.
System requirements
Microsoft Office 95 requires a 386DX or higher CPU, and either Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or Windows NT 3.51. It also requires 8 MB of RAM for typical use. Regarding hard disk space, compact installations require 28 MB, "typical" installations require 55 MB, and full installations require 88 MB.