And this version has a goodly number of bugs, as well.

But the colors are spruced up a bit, to be brighter, and to match more closely the design of Windows XP. One could be forgiven for thinking Microsoft is always trying to sell us both products when they upgrade.

Task Pane
One of the major new features Microsoft touts is OXP's use of task panes. When you perform certain tasks, the task pane pops up on then right side of the screen with lots of command options in it. For example, if you click on "Format" to format text, you'll have a pane that offers various formatting options. Unfortunately, adding the pane to the screen makes the actual text so small I can no longer see what I'm formatting (on a 17-inch set to 800x600 resolution). Since the formatting toolbar is always onscreen unless you deliberately remove it, this seems a bit like overkill.

On the other hand, I've found it very useful in Excel to choose a file from the list for opening, because it's much easier to see filenames and tell what you're doing. But there's a catch: if you click on File/New, the pane pops up with a list of old files to open. Click on File/Open and you get the normal directory/file selection tool.

I suppose this made sense to someone at Microsoft.

Smart Tags
Another highly-touted feature is "Smart Tags," which pop up when the program you're using recognizes what you've entered as a particular type of data. For example, when you copy text from one document to another, a smart tag appears with options of keeping the original formatting or changing the format to match the document it's being pasted into.

Unlike the "Smart Tags" proposed for Internet Explorer (which serve mostly to drag unsuspecting surfers to Microsoft sites), the Smart Tags in Office XP pop up at convenient points to allow quick changes. For example, if you start a list with a number, a Smart Tag appears offering to stop auto-numbering paragraphs. That alone almost makes the whole program worthwhile to me. I've often cursed the automat numbering, and wasted considerable time turning it off in my documents. Sometimes, though, the Smart Tag doesn't offer the options you think you want.

You have to hit a key to get rid of the smart tag, and sometimes the smart tag covers up the area you're working in so you don't know what key to hit. Also, the smart tag options vary depending on the data the program recognizes, so it can be pretty unpredictable what options you'll be offered.

In addition, the options in the smart tag are often easily available on the toolbars, which creates a redundancy. I like being able to do things multiple ways as a rule, but then I'm a programmer. Most ordinary users are likely to feel confused by the array of options.

Auto-Correct Options
Office XP also features some new options in auto-correcting. This is the feature that lets you automatically correct things you often do wrong. For example, it will change "abbout" into "about." New with this Office version is an auto-correct option button that drops into your document when Auto-Correct makes a correction. This button lets you keep the errant spelling, in case you wanted to show an example, as in my previous sentence.

But guess what? The button only shows up if you're actually in, or floating the mouse cursor over, the word in question. If you type along, letting the word be corrected, you may never know the word was corrected. This falls in the category of next-to-worthless enhancements.

On the other hand, and still related to auto-correct, I've been developing a custom dictionary of computer companies and names to use when editing Sacra Blue documents. The idea is to have a list that automatically checks the spelling, case, and hyphenation characteristics. For example, is Hewlett Packard one or two words, or hyphenated? In Office 2000, it was a bit of a chore to add things to a custom dictionary. In XP, it's much simpler. You don't have to use a separate editor, it opens right up in Word itself.

Interestingly, Office XP appears to copy the settings from whatever version you have installed (even if you don't do an upgrade), which included the changes I'd made to the toolbar in Word 2000. I was particularly gratified that I didn't have to go through the customization process to put a "small caps" command on my toolbar again.

Problem Reporting
The new Office offers you the opportunity to report problems to Microsoft, much like Windows XP does, so future versions can be corrected. At least, I think that's the reason. When I clicked "more information" in the error reporting dialog, I got an error message that said the request could not be completed because of too many automatic redirections.

Clipboard
The Office clipboard will now hold 24 items, instead of the default one item common to Windows. This can be helpful for those who have not already obtained another clipboard program, like ClipMate, to handle previously clipped items. I have to confess I'm not very clear on how this works, because sometimes when I try to paste, I get a list of everything on the clipboard, and other times the most recent clip is pasted without a suggestion that other clips might be available.

One of the most-ballyhooed features of Office XP is the addition of speech recognition, much like WordPerfect has offered for some time. Also, when choosing fonts, the name of the font can be shown in the font itself. This is not as good as WordPerfect 9, which shows the actual selection in your document in the type face you're evaluating, but perhaps Word will catch up.

There are new features in a number of office collaboration areas, like sharing and marking up documents. It can be irritating, though, to discover that the "reviewing" toolbar keeps popping up when you least expect it.

One feature whose functioning has been altered is the use of hyperlinks. I used to mark a selection, like a URL, and press Ctrl+K, which opened up the hyperlink editing box. Then I could adjust or correct things before going back to the text. In Office XP, this works pretty well for Web page addresses. But if I highlight an e-mail address and press Ctrl+K, I get a box showing the address as a Web address, not an e-mail one. When I click on the e-mail box to show that it's an e-mail address, Word inserts "mailto:" into the address that is displayed,. And clears the box of the address to go to. That puts in my document a "mailto:" I don't want, and forces me to retype the address in the "go to" box.

Holdover Bugs
A couple bugs that have been around practically forever still irritate me. The Office Toolbar, which could be a marvelously tool, lets you make oft-used applications available on a button bar that can stay onscreen or hide until you float the mouse over the area it appears in. But because of some programming errors, you can find the toolbar not appearing, or not disappearing, when you want it to. And if you start adding and deleting buttons, and moving them around on the toolbar, you'll find the icons no longer line up properly, or the names of the buttons have gone back to wpwin.exe instead of WordPerfect 9. If you like the idea of a toolbar like that, you should instead opt for LinkMenu, which is free from Shell Link.

Another old problem is with the "conditional sum wizard" in Excel. I have a client using Excel 97 in a series of large spreadsheets. They use the conditional sum wizard to add up numbers based on the value in a controlling column. For example, if A1 is "Yes," add the number.

Curiously, this wizard produces formulas that cannot be edited. If you try, you break the calculation but get no warning, just a "0" in your spreadsheet cell. I've tried this wizard in Office XP a number of times, and though it appears to be active according to the program, I can't get it to pop up so I can create a conditional formula. And the help file for Excel contains no entries on the conditional sum wizard.

All in all, the list of new features is not particularly compelling for those wanting to update, and the number of bugs is something of a deterrent. If you do not need a specific feature of Office XP, I'd advise waiting for the next version of Office, already announced by Microsoft.