Microsoft Office 4.0 is a major release of the

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

software suite, released by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

on January 17, 1994. Coming after

Microsoft Office 3.0 Microsoft Office 3.0 is a version of Microsoft Office, the second major release for the Microsoft Windows operating system and the third on the Macintosh. Omitting version 2 entirely on Windows, Microsoft released Office 3.0 on August 30, 1992. ...

, it was the third major release for the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and the fourth on the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

as version 4.2, as well as the first for

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

as 4.2.

Features

Its main components include

Word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

6.0, Excel 4.0a, PowerPoint 3.0, and

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

. Microsoft announced the product on October 17, 1993; version 5.0 of Excel and version 4.0 of PowerPoint were not completed in time for inclusion in Office 4.0. As a result, Microsoft offered a coupon with every purchase of Office 4.0 to customers to freely upgrade to the newer versions of Excel and PowerPoint, which were eventually released in April 1994. Microsoft's rival

Lotus Software Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was sold to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2-3 sprea ...

took advantage of this mishap and mocked Microsoft in advertisements of its

Lotus SmartSuite SmartSuite is a discontinued office suite from Lotus Software. The company made versions of its office suite for IBM OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. Status SmartSuite is no longer supported or maintained. SmartSuite used to be in maintenance mode, ...

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational database, relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsof ...

is included in the Professional edition of Office 4.0, which sold for US$99 extra over the standard suite. Microsoft Office 4.0 increased cohesion and consistent design between the different applications in the suite. The

Object Linking and Embedding Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is a proprietary technology developed by Microsoft that allows embedding and linking to documents and other objects. For developers, it brought OLE Control Extension (OCX), a way to develop and use custom user ...

(OLE) 2.0 ability links content between different documents.

IntelliSense Code completion is an autocompletion feature in many integrated development environments (IDEs) that speeds up the process of coding applications by fixing common mistakes and suggesting lines of code. This usually happens through popups while typ ...

is another new feature for predictive automation. Microsoft Office 4.3 was released on June 2, 1994, as a Professional edition, containing the updated versions of Excel and PowerPoint within the suite as well as the new version 2.0 of Access. The Standard edition was released as Microsoft Office 4.2 for Windows 3.1. Microsoft Office for NT was released on July 3, 1994, and was the first

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

version of Microsoft Office and hence native for

Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993. It marked the company's entry into the corporate computing environment, designed to support large networks and to be ...

(i386, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC platforms). However, the PowerPoint component remained in

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

. The suite was superseded by Microsoft Office for Windows 95. In September 1994, Microsoft Office 4.2 for the Macintosh (

M68k The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

and

Power Macintosh The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc as the core of the Mac (computer), Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006. Described by ''Mac ...

platforms) was released. The Macintosh version is also cohesive and now shares an identical interface with the Windows version of Office 4.x. The Standard Version 4.2.1 was a maintenance release in 1995. In 1997 another updated release came with essential business tools and

Microsoft Bookshelf Microsoft Bookshelf is a discontinued reference collection introduced in 1987 as part of Microsoft's extensive work in promoting CD-ROM technology as a distribution medium for electronic publishing. The original MS-DOS version showcased the mass ...

CD-ROM reference library.

System requirements

Microsoft Office 4.2 for Macintosh

* A Mac OS-compatible computer equipped with a

68020 The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keeping with naming practices common to Motorola designs, the 68020 is usually referred to as t ...

or higher processor or a

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

processor. *

System 7 System 7 (later named Mac OS 7) is the seventh major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. It was launched on May 13, 1991, to succeed System 6 with virtual memory, personal file shari ...

operating system or later. * At least 8 MB of physical RAM.Microsoft hits Power Mac users with hefty resource demand
COMPUTER WORLD, AUGUST 22, 1994 * Sufficient hard disk space, depending on installation: min. 18 MB to max. 35 MB. * An

8-bit color 8-bit color graphics are a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file, so that each pixel is represented by 8 bits (1 byte). The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time is 256 per pixel or ...

or 4-bit

grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...

display with at least 640 × 400 resolution.

References

{{Microsoft Office 1994 software 4.x