Riding Word and Excel's Coattails

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1999 by Cristina Gair

THE SUCCESS OF MICROSOFT'S Office productivity suite--more than 100 million licenses sold and more than an 82 percent market share in 1998, according to research firm Dataquest--has inspired an industry of third-party add-on tools that Microsoft Office Small Business Edition product manager Steve Brown says "reflect the incredible vibrancy of the technology marketplace." While Microsoft recently bought one of the more prominent Office add-on makers, drawing tool vendor Visio Corp., plenty of independent offerings remain. Here's a sampling:

Database Choice FileMaker company spokesperson Kevin Mallon can't resist a gibe at Microsoft's Access database, saying that with the Office 2000-integrated FileMaker Pro 5 ($249; 800-325-2747, www.filemaker.com), "finally, Office users are able to access an easy-to-use database." Friendly new features in version 5 include the ability to drag and drop Excel spreadsheets directly into FileMaker Pro, with column names automatically translating into field names.

Teaming Up WebEx.com (free for up to four users for 10 minutes; $25 per month for unlimited time and users; www.webex.com) lets coworkers collaborate in a virtual meeting room, using their browsers to work together on a Word document or PowerPoint presentation. WebEx.com works seamlessly with Office 2000, letting colleagues save revisions to see what changes previous users have made.

Smart Business While it's part of Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5--whose $399 list price is knocked down to $149 for upgrades from Microsoft Office--Lotus is also promoting its SmartCenter utility as an Office add-on. The company has been offering SmartCenter 1.0 as a free download from www.lotus.com/smartcenter, letting Windows 95/98 users add a toolbar with constantly updated access to news, stock prices, weather, and travel information from content providers such as Yahoo, PC Quote, MapQuest, and Travelocity.

Tools Galore Macmillan Computer Publishing's Macmillan Plus Pack software package ($40; www.mcp.com) provides homebusiness tools such as letterwriting software, a reference guide, a graphics program, and e-mail template software for Office 2000. The bundle also comes with the latest version of Woody Leonhard's popular WOPR utilities, which include macros for file management, envelope printing, a print and zip code search utility, and a right-click thesaurus.